My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 292 The music was turned off

The gaps on the blackboard are disappearing at a visible rate.

The clean area that Chen Zhuo had wiped out with paper, which was only one square meter in size, was no longer enough.

The red, yellow, and white characters, like living vines, spread wildly in all directions of the blackboard along the algebraic truncation line in the very center.

The three people were standing very close together.

They were too close, almost shoulder to shoulder.

In this less than two-square-meter workspace, they initially maintained a basic level of courtesy among colleagues. When one person wanted to write, the other two would slightly step aside to make room for them.

But as the analysis progressed, this meager sense of dignity was quickly forgotten.

With minds racing, hands are increasingly unable to keep up with the pace of thought, and no one cares about social distancing.

Allen held the half-eaten red chalk, staring at a blank space in the upper right corner of the blackboard.

He had just finished deriving the boundary conditions of the vacuum state of the gauge field, and the tensor model of the vibration of the string membrane was coming to mind.

He was eager to write down this tensor formula because it was the final step in solidifying the entire physical framework.

Allen reached out his arm, and the red chalk tip just drew a complex Hamiltonian symbol on the blackboard.

"Get out of the way."

A rough mutter came from the side.

Sam's body jerked to the left, his shoulder slamming into Allen's arm.

Allen's chalk wobbled, and the unfinished symbol left a long, glaring red line across the loop code Sam had just written.

"Are you crazy?"

Allen turned his head, his dark circles under his eyes appearing somewhat dull due to bloodshotness. He glared at Sam and raised his voice.

Sam didn't even look at him.

This slightly overweight MIT researcher was staring intently at the area in front of him.

He grabbed the hem of his hoodie with his left hand, wiped the sweat from his forehead haphazardly, and held the pitifully short yellow chalk in his right hand, about to put it on the blackboard.

"You took my spot."

Sam was breathing heavily, his chest heaving violently.

"My nested code here isn't closed yet. You've written your graviton mass tensor here. What are you trying to do?"

Sam raised his left hand without hesitation and pressed the back of his hand directly onto the red symbol that Allen had just drawn, wiping it hard.

Red chalk dust mixed with the sweat on Sam's hands smeared a red stain on the blackboard, erasing most of the half-formula that Allen had painstakingly written.

"Don't touch my equations!"

Allen panicked and grabbed Sam's left wrist, pulling it outward forcefully.

"Your equation?"

Sam shook off Allen's hand, his bloodshot eyes filled with an unreasonable irritation, and pointed to the red stain.

"By including the mass of the graviton, you're essentially adding another dimension of parameters to this boundary! Do you know how large this array will be in my Monte Carlo algorithm?"

Sam turned to face Allen, his hoodie covered in chalk dust.

"The array will overflow! Your damn physical intuition is going to completely crash my code! Get out of here and stop stuffing your tensors into my loops!"

Allen was angered by his words.

"Without gravitons, how can a string membrane be self-consistent at its boundary?"

Allen retorted without backing down, clutching the broken piece of red chalk tightly in his hand.

"Are you dreaming? Do you think the physical world is like game code you can modify at will? Without taking mass into account, this entire framework is just a piece of floating waste paper!"

The two stood there in front of the blackboard, neither willing to back down even a step.

The chalk dust in the surrounding air hung like a thin layer of mist on their cheeks and hair.

The noise from the tavern seemed to fade into the background, leaving only the two of them muttering curses in suppressed voices.

Two postdoctoral researchers from top universities, arguing over the storage location of a single parameter, were practically banging their shoulders against each other's chests, like two red-eyed gamblers fighting over a toy.

Chen Zhuo stood in the middle of them, a little behind.

He did not participate in the physical pushing and shoving.

Chen Zhuo held the white chalk in his hand, quietly watching them argue.

His face showed neither the annoyance of having his train of thought interrupted, nor the panic of rushing forward to loudly mediate the fight.

He simply tilted his head slightly, raised his hand, and wiped the bit of white powder dust off the tip of his nose with the back of his hand.

Once their breathing had calmed down a bit, Chen Zhuo took a step forward.

He slipped between Allen and Sam.

Without any emotional fluctuations, he was like a precisely functioning machine, automatically filtering out those meaningless arguments.

Chen Zhuo raised his hand.

The white chalk fell directly onto the red and yellow border area where Allen and Sam were arguing.

A clean, white diagonal line neatly crossed out Allen's remaining half of the tensor symbol and Sam's unfinished loop code.

Sam was stunned, and Allen shut his mouth as well.

The two of them turned to look at Chen Zhuo at the same time.

Chen Zhuo did not look at them.

After crossing out that area with his chalk, he immediately wrote a new mapping relationship on it.

An extremely neatly formatted symbol for a quotient space mapping.

After finishing this, Chen Zhuo put down his pen.

He turned his head, first looking at Allen, then at Sam.

"Map its quality out."

He pointed to the sigma symbol he had just written.

"Allen needs gravitons to ensure physical consistency, while Sam needs to reduce parameters to prevent the array from overflowing."

Chen Zhuo took the chalk and lightly tapped below the symbol.

"Then let's construct an equivalence class."

Chen Zhuo looked at them, speaking slowly, but every word was stuck at the deepest level of logic.

"Fold all the physical states with mass tensors into this quotient space; it exists outside the constant wall."

Chen Zhuo turned his gaze to the algebra wall he had initially drawn.

"But within the loop body of the algorithm, it only manifests as an equivalence point."

Chen Zhuo lowered his hand, stepped back to his previous position, and gave them space again.

"Don't calculate mass within my constant wall."

Chen Zhuo spoke with an unquestionable certainty.

"Mapping it outwards, the outside belongs to physics, the inside belongs to code."

The argument stopped abruptly.

Allen stared at the equivalence class symbol in the commercial space, and his mind, which had been congested with anger, instantly cooled down.

The laws of physics have not been broken, and gravitons are still there; they have simply been packaged up using mathematical methods.

Sam's eyes lit up. Folding it into an equivalence point meant that in the code, it was just a pointer that didn't take up memory, and the array wouldn't overflow.

Between two minds trapped in a dead end of madness, Chen Zhuo, without raising his voice, completed the coldest and most precise logical cut with just a line of white space mapping.

Sam didn't look at Allen again; he turned around and practically pounced on the blackboard.

"That's right..."

Sam muttered incoherently, and the yellow chalk in his hand started moving wildly again.

Allen returned to the blackboard without a word, stood next to Sam, and began to complete the equations for the vacuum state following Chen Zhuo's equivalence classes.

The three of them squeezed together again.

The chalk dust grew thicker and thicker, settling in the folds of my clothes and on my shoes.

The increase in mathematical symbols and codes was even faster than before, and the rustling sound coming from the blackboard was like a relentless downpour.

Time slips away unnoticed.

The night outside the tavern grew deeper and deeper.

This high-intensity mental output and violent writing style consumes an astonishing amount of physical strength and tools.

Chen Zhuo had already changed the white chalk in his hand twice.

Allen could barely hold onto the chalk; he could only manage to pinch it between the tips of his thumb and forefinger.

Two o'clock in the morning.

Sam was in a state of extreme excitement.

Following Chen Zhuo's quotient space mapping, he pushed the last nested loop of the entire local convergence algorithm to the most critical node.

As long as the exit of this loop can be closed, this code is logically sound.

Sam's breathing became heavy, and sweat streamed down his slightly chubby cheeks and into his collar.

He didn't even bother to wipe his sweat.

He stared intently at the blackboard, his right hand gripping the small piece of yellow chalk tightly.

Because he used too much force, the veins on the back of his hand bulged, and his knuckles turned an abnormal white.

"As long as i tends towards this equivalent point..."

Sam growled as he heavily drew the curly brace representing the end of the loop on the blackboard.

Just as the chalk tip was about to close.

"Smack."

A very crisp but tiny cracking sound.

The half-piece of damp, already inferior yellow chalk was crushed to dust between Sam's two thick fingers under his relentless pressure.

The shattered powder didn't fall to the ground; instead, it turned into a cloud of yellow powder that trickled down Sam's fingers.

The curly bracket on the blackboard is missing its last corner.

Sam's hand froze in mid-air.

His pupils contracted instantly, and the logic that was racing through his mind like a high-speed train seemed to have been suddenly cut off, crashing directly into a wall.

The feeling of the loop being about to close, only to be abruptly broken at the last moment, made Sam's face turn deathly pale.

He almost instinctively lowered his head and frantically groped around in the groove under the blackboard.

His fingers scraped back and forth in the rough wooden groove, touching pieces of cold cigarette butts, dusty wood shavings, and several beer bottle caps that had been sitting there for who knows how long.

It doesn't have the feel of a cylinder.

empty.

There wasn't a single piece of yellow chalk left, not even a single usable chalk stub.

Sam's hand stopped in the trough.

He stared at the thick layer of chalk dust mixed with cigarette ash for a full two seconds.

Then, Sam suddenly turned around.

That face, which had been fairly easygoing, was now completely distorted.

His eyes were frighteningly red, covered with dense red blood vessels. His hoodie hung crookedly on his body, the collar open, revealing a T-shirt soaked with sweat underneath.

His hands hung limply at his sides, his fingers trembling slightly, his fingernails filled with yellow and white chalk dust, and the tips of two fingers were even broken from the excessive friction, oozing a little streaks of blood mixed with the yellow chalk dust.

Sam looked at the bar owner at the very front of the tavern, who was still wiping glasses.

He opened his mouth and roared hysterically in a voice that was completely unlike that of the Ivy League researcher he usually was.

"Boss!"

That shout completely drowned out the background music playing in the tavern.

Sam took a big step forward, a cracking sound coming from his throat.

"Chalk! Go to the convenience store next door and buy them all!"

He waved his arm, which was covered in powder and blood, like a madman driven to desperation.

"Buy them all! Right now!!!"

A hoarse roar echoed through the dimly lit tavern, striking the floor and brick walls.

The guests at the tables closest to the blackboard were startled by the sudden roar.

Some people's billiard cues froze in mid-air, while others nearly spilled their beer as they picked up their glasses.

The owner behind the bar was also stunned by this reckless behavior. He stood there, holding a white towel for wiping the wine glasses, and didn't react for a moment.

David remained seated at the cork table, a few steps away from the blackboard.

He didn't participate in the deductions on the blackboard, but his eyes never left those three people.

Hearing Sam's hoarse roar.

David did not hesitate at all.

He stood up abruptly from his chair, without asking Sam why he was angry or trying to comfort him.

David reached into his pocket and strode towards the bar.

He stopped in front of the bar.

The boss snapped out of his daze and was about to say something.

David pulled a folded banknote out of his pocket.

He unfolded the banknote; it was a hundred-dollar bill. David raised his hand and slammed the bill heavily onto the slightly sticky bar counter.

"Smack."

David looked at the owner behind the bar, his tone calm but revealing an uncompromising firmness.

"Do as he says, go and buy chalk."

The boss glanced at the hundred-dollar bill, then at Sam in the distance, who was panting heavily like an angry bear, and swallowed hard.

He quickly swept the money into the drawer, grabbed his coat hanging on the chair, and strode out of the tavern.

David watched the boss leave without immediately turning around.

His hands rested on the bar counter, his gaze sweeping over the jukebox in the corner, its colorful neon lights always on.

The machine was still playing a rock song with a cheerful rhythm tirelessly, the booming bass vibrating in the air.

"Turn that off."

David turned his head and looked at a young waiter who remained at the bar.

The waiter was taken aback.

"What?"

"I said, turn off the music."

David pointed to the jukebox; the sound wasn't loud, but it was cold.

The waiter seemed intimidated by David's aura as an Ivy League elite. He didn't argue, but quickly went over and fumbled around on the back of the jukebox.

"Clatter."

A harsh, physical button click.

The deafening rock music abruptly stopped in an instant.

It's like a train traveling at high speed suddenly having its tracks cut off out of thin air.

The sudden, abrupt silence made it seem as if the air in the entire tavern had collapsed at that moment.

One second it was a noisy world filled with alcohol, laughter, the sound of billiard balls clashing, and rock music.

The next second, all background noise was forcibly removed.

A brief tinnitus even appeared in my ears due to the sudden silence.

The patrons in the tavern—researchers and graduate students from Harvard, MIT, or Boston University—all stopped talking.

Not knowing what had happened, they instinctively turned their heads and followed David's gaze to the secluded corner at the far end of the tavern.

In the entire empty and dimly lit tavern, only one sound remained for a moment.

That sound came from in front of the blackboard.

Sam and Allen's heavy, bellows-like breathing was amplified countless times in the quiet air, making one's lungs feel tight.

Interspersed among these heavy breathing sounds was another extremely regular and stable sound.

"Thump."

"Thump."

"Thump."

That was the sound of the last bit of white chalk in Chen Zhuo's hand hitting the blackboard, one tap at a time.

In the brief minute or two that Sam went crazy and screamed, and David slammed down the dollar bills and turned off the music.

Chen Zhuo didn't stop at all.

Undisturbed by any external interference, his chalk continued to methodically deduce the next algebraic boundary conditions based on that quotient space mapping.

The sound of chalk falling was as steady as a mechanical clock without emotion, but in this deathly silent environment, each sound struck the eardrums of everyone, making their hearts pound.

No one spoke in the tavern.

Dozens of eyes were fixed on the corner where someone was writing frantically under the dim wall lamp.

They looked at the two disheveled, chalk-covered, bloodshot-eyed white youths.

They watched the Asian boy standing among them, his back slender, yet drawing white lines on the blackboard with an almost cold rationality.

Looking at the old blackboard that was almost completely filled with red, yellow and white colors, so dense that it was impossible to breathe.

Several people who were originally holding billiard cues unknowingly leaned their cues against the wall.

Several people holding half-empty beer glasses stood there, their hands frozen in mid-air. The foam on the surface of the beer burst, but no one took a sip.

In this small Boston bar, a sense of oppression, indescribable and overwhelming, silently engulfed everyone present like a tidal wave.