My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 300 Tomorrow Morning

David's black Cadillac was parked under a streetlamp.

Water droplets still clung to the car's paint after the rain. The headlights were off, the driver's side window was rolled down halfway, and David leaned back in his seat, a cigarette between his fingers, the butt glowing intermittently.

Chen Zhuo walked over, opened the passenger door, and got in.

The air conditioning in the carriage was set to a comfortable temperature, perfectly keeping out the chill of early autumn outside.

He rested one hand on the steering wheel, watched Chen Zhuo close the car door, and then stepped on the gas.

"How did the talks with Professor Pierre go?"

David glanced at the road ahead and casually asked a question.

"Good."

"He told me to finish the math section tonight and send it to Dean Cyril tomorrow morning."

David turned the steering wheel, and the car turned onto a relatively wide main road.

"Is everything alright with the Journal of Mathematics?" David asked.

"I've already made the call and left a gap in the schedule."

Chen Zhuo turned his head and looked at the street scene rushing past the car window.

"I'll finish the base text for pure algebra tonight and send it to him tomorrow morning. Princeton will wait for the sample copies to be available and then check them against the printing."

After hearing this, David's lips curled up slightly, and his fingers, gripping the steering wheel, tapped the edge of the leather twice.

"They can wait, but the people outside are going crazy with anxiety."

David's voice had a teasing tone.

Chen Zhuo turned his head and looked at David.

David glanced at Chen Zhuo, his smile widening.

"This afternoon, the owner of the Rusty Tavern called me."

"He said that as soon as the store opened today, a group of college students and young researchers, who seemed to have come from nowhere, wandered around the corner where we sat last night. Some of them were looking for the three tables that I bought, and others were squatting on the ground looking for any pieces of chalk that had fallen."

Chen Zhuo listened, raised an eyebrow, and was somewhat amused and exasperated.

"What do you need the chalk for?"

"Who knows?"

David shrugged.

"But that's not the most exciting part. The most exciting part is that, I don't know which guy took a picture with his Nokia phone in the bar last night."

"Nokia?" Chen Zhuo asked.

"Yes, the pixels are so blurry they look like a mosaic."

David smiled and shook his head.

"But that blurry image was posted on arXiv this afternoon. You can barely make out the algebraic truncation symbols you drew on the edge of the table crack; there isn't even a complete condition."

Chen Zhuo casually opened the storage compartment in front of him, took out a small bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap, and took a sip.

"and then?"

He put down the water bottle and asked casually.

"Then, a stubborn postdoc at MIT saw that picture."

"He's also a computer scientist, and I guess he wanted to get ahead of the game by directly taking the incomplete truncation operator from that blurry image and forcing it into their lab's parallel architecture to run the model."

Chen Zhuo held the water bottle and smiled somewhat helplessly.

"If you don't fully understand the boundary conditions and force a discrete loop, the system will crash."

"yes."

David burst out laughing.

"So their lab's server crashed on the spot, burning out three RAID disks. I heard that those old professors are now as anxious as ants on a hot pan, searching all over the world to find out where those few lines of formula in the photo came from."

Chen Zhuo smiled, screwed the cap back on the water bottle, and put it back in the storage compartment.

"Don't force it if it's blurry."

Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair.

"Let them be anxious for now. I'll send the complete draft to Cyril tomorrow morning, and they'll be able to see the high-definition version soon, instead of guessing based on Nokia's photos."

"How are Sam and Allen doing now?"

Chen Zhuo looked ahead and asked a question.

"Good."

David stepped on the gas, and the car picked up speed.

"When I sent someone to verify the benchmark scores earlier today, the two of them slept in their apartment all day. When I was getting ready to pick you up, Sam was just ordering pizza on the phone, and he's probably eating it right now."

As night deepened, the car drove out of downtown Boston, and the buildings on both sides of the road gradually became sparse, with tall red oak trees swaying gently in the night breeze.

The car slowly came to a stop in front of a quiet, upscale apartment building.

David turned off the engine and opened the car door.

Chen Zhuo followed David up the steps.

David took out the key and turned the switch to open the door.

As soon as you open the door, a strong blast of cool air mixed with the rich aroma of cheese pizza and coffee hits you right in the face.

The apartment was spacious, with several warm-toned floor lamps lit up in the living room.

The study door was open, but Sam and Allen were not in the study.

Sam was sprawled out on the large sofa in the living room, completely lacking any decorum.

He had an open cardboard box in his arms and was holding half a slice of Italian sausage pizza in his hand, chewing it with gusto.

His laptop sat on the edge of the coffee table, its screen displaying rows of densely packed code.

Allen leaned against the bar not far away, holding a mug filled with steaming coffee.

His hair was a little messy, but his eyes were bright, and he seemed to be in much better spirits than he had been this afternoon.

Hearing the noise at the door, Sam swallowed the pizza in his mouth and turned around.

"David".

Sam waved the half-pizza in his hand, greeted Chen Zhuo, and then began to complain.

"Your apartment has a great location and the decor is impeccable, but what brand is this sofa?"

David casually tossed his car keys onto the cabinet in the entryway and walked in.

"What?" David asked.

"It's too soft."

Sam rubbed his greasy hand on the corner of his mouth.

"Sitting here, I feel like I'm going to sink in and never get out. I just typed code for half an hour, and my back is even more sore than it was on the hard bench in the bar last night."

Allen leaned against the bar, holding his mug and laughing.

"David, ignore him."

Allen took a sip of coffee.

"He's obviously bored. He spent the whole night lying on the floor in that rusty corner yesterday, and after sleeping in all day today, he's now sitting on a sofa that costs tens of thousands of dollars and his back hurts."

Chen Zhuo walked in with a slight smile on his face.

He ignored their casual conversation about the sofa, walked over to the coffee table, pulled over a sturdy-looking chair, and sat down.

"How's your progress?"

Chen Zhuo put his notebook on the table and looked up at them.

Sam sat up straight, stuffed the last bit of pizza into his mouth, and tore off a tissue to wipe his hands.

"The overall framework should be fine."

Sam patted the laptop next to him.

"I've had enough sleep during the day, and my mind is much clearer now. The main task now is to delete all the redundant code from the previous continuous state and nest your constant wall. It's a lot of work, but it's okay."

Alan walked over with a coffee cup and sat down on the armrest of the sofa opposite Chen Zhuo.

"My physics model is now completely closed-loop."

Allen tapped his finger on the cup.

"Last night, after you finished writing the last line on the table, the vacuum-state divergence was blocked. My task tonight is to reorganize my messy drafts and transcribe them into a decent outline to submit to PRL."

Allen paused for a moment, looking at the grid notebook Chen Zhuo had placed on the table.

"And you, Chen?" Allen asked.

"What did Professor Pierre say?"

Chen Zhuo reached out and touched the leather cover of the grid notebook.

"Dean Cyril left a gap."

Chen Zhuo's tone remained calm.

"I'll sort out the pure mathematics part tonight and send it to Dean Cyril first thing tomorrow morning."

The hall fell silent for a moment.

Sam was still clutching the wad of tissue he had used to wipe his hands, his eyes widening slightly.

"First thing tomorrow morning?"

Sam looked at Chen Zhuo, his tone carrying a hint of unbelievable exaggeration.

Chen Zhuo nodded.

"Okay," Chen Zhuo said, "First thing tomorrow morning."

Sam turned to look at Allen and threw the tissue in his hand into the trash can.

"It's over, Allen."

Sam leaned back on the soft sofa, sighed, and his voice was filled with a faint sadness.

"Listen to what he's saying. This level of mathematical foundation requires building a completely new algebraic geometric framework on discrete lattice points. He plans to finish writing it all in one night."

Sam spread his hands.

"In comparison, the two of us sitting here tonight, painstakingly working through these four pages of outline and a few lines of code, look like two idiots who have just learned to type in front of him."

Allen couldn't help but roll his eyes at Sam.

He took a sip of coffee and retorted to Sam without any mercy.

"That's you, Sam."

Allen ruthlessly exposed Sam's words.

"Don't drag me into this. My physics model was forcibly shut down by him in the bar last night. I'm just copying the draft tonight. If you think I'm stupid, it's you who's stupid."

Sam rolled his eyes, too lazy to pay any attention to Allen.

He reached out and pulled the laptop off the edge of the coffee table toward him, the light from the screen shining on his slightly chubby face.

"Alright, enough with the nonsense."

Sam muttered to himself, his fingers returning to the keyboard.

"I have to get to work. If Chen sends the draft over tomorrow morning, and Princeton checks it and finds that my code still isn't working, I'll really become the biggest joke at the Ivy League."

David walked to the bar, poured himself a glass of ice water, leaned against the edge of the counter and watched them with a slight smile on his face.

The atmosphere was very relaxed.

No one thought it was a serious battle; they were just a few students huddled in their dorm room the night before final exams, complaining to each other while rushing to finish their homework.

Chen Zhuo sat in that chair, listening to their banter, the corners of his mouth never leaving his lips.

He didn't say anything more, but quietly pulled out the chair in front of him and adjusted his posture.

He pulled the black Montblanc pen from the edge of the notebook.

He opened the notebook, gently pressed down the edges to flatten the paper.

The arguing in the hall gradually subsided.

Sam had already focused his attention back on the screen, the keyboard clattering rhythmically.

Allen put down his mug, picked up a ballpoint pen from the table, and began writing the first line of the physical model's formula on a new A4 sheet of paper.

David took a sip of ice water, turned around and walked to another computer a little further away, put on one earphone, and began to handle his work.

The lights shone warmly down from the ceiling.

Chen Zhuo lowered his head slightly.

A discrete algebra symbol appears smoothly on the paper.

Then came the second, and the third.

There was no draft, no pause.

The vast logic that had already been constructed in his mind flowed down his wrist, turning into black ink and firmly embedding itself at the intersection of the grid.

The sound was very soft, but in the quiet hall, it had a strange sense of rhythm.

It mingled with the crisp sound of Sam typing on the keyboard, the scratching of Allen's ballpoint pen, and the faint whirring of the central air conditioning vents.

Chen Zhuo wrote at a very steady pace.

Folding of commercial space.

Mapping of intermediate Jacobian varieties.

These colossal concepts, originally belonging to the field of continuous differential geometry, are peeled away layer by layer in his writing, and then re-attached using discrete lattice points.

Night was falling in the suburbs of Boston.

The leaves of the red oak tree outside the window rustled softly in the occasional breeze.

None of the four people in the hall spoke again.

Sam would occasionally stop typing, frown and stare at the screen for a while, then grab a handful of hair in frustration and continue typing.

After finishing a page of draft, Allen would put it aside, pick up his coffee cup, take a small sip of his now-cold coffee, and then pull out a new sheet of paper.

David was speaking softly in English in front of the computer, keeping his voice very low so as not to disturb anyone.

Chen Zhuo's progress was not affected in any way.

The notebook was filled with rows of black text.

He finished writing a page, turned it over, pressed his finger along the seam of the paper, and continued writing the next page.

Time passed silently in this air-conditioned hall filled with the smell of coffee.

As the night wore on, Sam's knocking gradually slowed down. He rubbed his aching neck and turned to look at Chen Zhuo sitting diagonally across from him.

Chen Zhuo's sitting posture remained unchanged.

He lowered his head slightly, his back straight, and the Montblanc pen seemed to come alive in his fingers, constantly flowing out complex formulas on the paper.

Sam looked at the pure algebraic derivations that he couldn't understand at all, sighed silently, shook his head, and turned his gaze back to his screen.

Alan had somehow dragged a chair to the French windows and, using the dim streetlights and indoor lights, sat cross-legged on the floor, spreading out his physics outline on the carpet and checking it line by line.

Chen Zhuo wrote up to page eight.

He stopped writing and shook his slightly sore right wrist.

He picked up the water glass beside him, took a sip, and the water, which was completely cold, slid down his throat, making him a little more awake.