He dropped the hand that was propping up his chin. His body leaned forward involuntarily, his face almost pressing against the screen.
The continuous calculus derivation, which had been proceeding smoothly, came to an abrupt halt at the third step.
In its place was an extremely unfamiliar model of discrete algebraic geometry.
In this model, the Singularity—the point that was originally approaching zero infinitely and would cause the entire equation to collapse—had been forcibly partitioned into a mesh of discrete grids.
David’s eyes darted back and forth as he frantically performed calculations and verifications in his mind.
’This is impossible.’
’If you break continuity, the manifold’s topological structure will be completely torn apart.’
David scrolled down a little with the mouse wheel.
Step four.
An exceptionally elegant mapping matrix appeared on the screen.
It was like a transparent bridge suspended in mid-air, seamlessly connecting the severed discrete grids.
There were no bloated compensation parameters, no crude patches to forcibly suppress infinity.
It simply took a graceful detour and untied the knot.
The only sound in the office was the faint whir of the computer’s case fan.
David sat there like a statue.
He didn’t make a sound, just fumbled with the mouse to scroll the document back to the very top, rereading it word by word, line by line.
Delian walked over to the coffee machine, planning to pour himself another half cup.
"What’s wrong?" Delian asked casually, hearing no sound from behind him. "Did you mix up a basic concept somewhere?"
David didn’t turn around.
"Professor."
David’s voice was strained, carrying a tremor like someone gasping for fresh air after being deprived of oxygen.
"You’d better... come take a look at this."
Delian’s hand, reaching for a cup, paused.
He knew his student.
David was a proud, arrogant young man; whatever had him speaking in this tone was definitely not some common error.
Delian put down the cup, walked over to the computer desk, and stood behind David’s chair.
"Look here." David pointed a trembling finger at the third line of the formula on the screen. "He severed the continuous integral."
Delian furrowed his brow.
He pulled his reading glasses from his pocket, put them on, and leaned down.
The moment his eyes fell upon the screen, Delian’s breath caught in his throat.
Without needing David to explain, his eyes, like high-precision scanners, instantly devoured the logic of the first two lines.
As his gaze slid down to the Discrete Matrix, Delian’s fingers unconsciously tightened on the back of the leather chair, which let out an almost imperceptible creak.
’What the hell is this line of thought?’
In this office, they were used to patching up a high tower like bricklayers.
But the person on the screen had simply kicked out the tower’s load-bearing wall and suspended the entire structure in mid-air with an invisible thread.
Brutal.
One might even call it unreasonable.
And yet, it was logically, perfectly self-consistent.
Delian reached out and took the mouse from David’s hand.
He didn’t scroll down. Instead, his eyes were glued to the mapping matrix, his mind racing with frantic calculations.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
The air in the office seemed to freeze.
Outside, wind and snow raged, but inside, it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Delian slowly released the mouse.
He straightened up, took off his reading glasses, and turned to look at the blackboard.
The renormalization patch on the blackboard—the one they had proudly cobbled together after pulling an all-nighter—now seemed clumsy and ridiculous in comparison to the two pages on the screen, like a monster covered in fleshy tumors.
"This is impossible..." David muttered to himself. "How did he even think of this? Using a discrete algorithm to solve a continuous manifold? That’s the logic of low-level computer architecture, not a conventional path in theoretical physics."
"But it works."
Delian’s voice was low, as if suppressing some immense internal turmoil.
He walked to the blackboard and picked up the eraser.
Without any hesitation.
Delian raised his hand and, stroke by stroke, wiped the bloated formula that had occupied half the blackboard completely clean.
White chalk dust drifted down.
After he was done, Delian turned around, looked at the clean half of the blackboard, and let out a long breath.
As if a mountain had been lifted from his shoulders.
"This is mathematics."
Delian looked at the screen, his eyes shining with the kind of light one has when encountering a kindred spirit.
"David, we’ve been running around in this maze for three months, bashing our heads against the walls, and this person just climbed right over them."
David swallowed hard.
"Professor, who on earth is this Zhuo Chen?"
Delian strode back to the computer and pulled a chair over to sit down.
"Look him up. Right now."
Delian pointed to the email address on the screen.
"Huake University. See if their math or physics department recently brought in some international heavyweight, or maybe he’s some reclusive old academician?"
David quickly opened a browser.
The clacking of the keyboard was exceptionally crisp in the quiet office.
"Zhuo Chen... Chen Zhuo...?"
David typed the name and institution into the Google search bar, limiting the search to academic paper databases.
The page loaded.
The results were sparse. There were a few people with the same name, but they were either in chemical materials or clinical medicine. Not a single one had a résumé that could be connected to this level of cutting-edge algebraic geometry theory.
"Nothing." The more David searched, the stranger it felt. "There are absolutely no publication records for this person in the fields of physics or mathematics in any database. It’s like... he appeared out of thin air."
Delian’s brow was tightly furrowed.
"It’s impossible for someone to appear out of thin air."
Delian looked at the two pages of the meticulously formatted PDF document.
"This experienced angle of approach, this style with not a single wasted word... this is absolutely the work of a seasoned veteran who has been immersed in academia for half a lifetime and is completely fluent with mathematical tools."
He pointed at the document.
"Young academics love to show off, to complicate simple problems to display their depth. Only someone who has truly seen through to the essence of things would write such pure formulas, stripped of all pretense."
David nodded in agreement.
An image had already formed in his mind: an old scholar from Hua Country in a Zhongshan suit, with salt-and-pepper hair, who had spent decades silently working out deductions before a blackboard.
"Reply to this... Professor Chen."
Delian stood up, his tone becoming extremely solemn.
He didn’t use "student" or the conventional "Dr." In his mind, he had already placed this person on an equal, or even higher, footing.
"Use my personal email."
Delian clasped his hands behind his back and paced around the office, dictating as he walked.
"David, you type."
David immediately switched back to the email reply screen and placed his hands on the keyboard.
"Dear Professor Chen," Delian began, slowly weighing his words, "We have carefully read your letter and its attachment. It is a breathtaking solution."
David’s fingers flew across the keyboard, typing out Delian’s words.
"We attempted to mend the boundary using traditional methods, but your discrete algebraic model, like a scalpel, precisely excised the lesion. We sat before our blackboard for two months, while your two pages have shown us the light."
Delian stopped pacing and turned to look at the heavy snow outside the window.
"If you have time in the near future, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study would be honored to invite you for an in-depth academic visit. I have a few preliminary thoughts on the further extension of this matrix and hope to discuss them with you in person."
After typing the last line, David looked up at Delian before hitting the send button.
"Professor, a formal invitation for a visit, just like that? We haven’t even verified his identity."
"Academia doesn’t require identity verification." Delian pointed to the formulas still on the screen. "This document is the best proof of identity he could have. Send it."
The notification sound of a successfully sent email chimed in the office.
Delian walked back to the coffee machine and poured himself a full cup of coffee. Holding the mug, he gazed at the half-erased blackboard.
「Across the ocean.」
That email, carrying the academic reverence of a Princeton professor and capable of setting off a storm in Hua Country, silently slipped through the submarine fiber-optic cables and into the campus network server of the Hua Country Science and Technology University.
It lay quietly in a recently registered inbox belonging to "Zhuo Chen."
And no one was there to open it.

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