He held the eraser, wiped away a line, wrote another, then wiped it away again. He was on the verge of a complete breakdown.
"That’s not right. Not right."
Li Jianming shook his head again and again.
"After substituting the imaginary time variable, the Jacobian determinant here isn’t zero. The space is still warped; it won’t reduce to three dimensions."
Wu Tao’s hands were trembling.
"Professor, I’ve run through the derivation four times and I’m stuck here. Is there a problem with the initial boundary conditions we set?"
"The boundaries are fine."
Li Jianming said decisively, but his eyes were also glazed over as he stared at the blackboard.
Chen Zhuo stood at the door without immediately making a sound. He watched the derivation process on the blackboard for a moment.
It was the follow-up proof for the homology group mapping theory he had left behind. He had provided the theoretical direction, but Li Jianming didn’t let him handle the specific, rigorous proof, intending to tackle it himself with Wu Tao.
Now, it seemed they were biting off more than they could chew.
Chen Zhuo reached out and knocked on the open door.
"Professor Li, Senior Brother Wu."
Li Jianming whipped his head around. The moment he saw Chen Zhuo, his face, which had been full of worry, instantly lit up.
"Xiaozhuo! Perfect timing!"
Li Jianming stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, strode over, and grabbed Chen Zhuo’s arm, pulling him toward the blackboard.
"Quick, take a look. That idea you mentioned before, about introducing imaginary time for dynamic compensation—Wu Tao can’t get it to close at the third step of the expansion. Come see what’s wrong with this determinant."
Wu Tao, as if clutching at a lifeline, looked at Chen Zhuo with pleading eyes and even thoughtfully offered him the half-piece of chalk in his hand.
Chen Zhuo didn’t take the chalk.
He allowed himself to be led to the blackboard by Professor Li, stopped, and glanced over the formulas.
"Professor Li, the approach is fine. You just dropped a non-linear term during the expansion."
Chen Zhuo’s tone was gentle, with no hint of being condescending.
"Which term?" Li Jianming asked, leaning closer.
"Third row, second column. The integral in the parentheses."
Chen Zhuo pointed.
"That term can be ignored in lower dimensions, but when mapped to a high-dimensional topological space, it acts as a constant amplifier. Add it in, and the determinant will flatten."
Wu Tao froze for a second, his gaze following Chen Zhuo’s finger. He quickly reran the calculation in his head, then slapped his thigh.
"Right! Right, right, right! How could I have ignored that compensation term by treating it as an infinitesimal!"
Wu Tao was so excited he was practically dancing. He turned and began scribbling furiously on the blackboard.
Li Jianming let out a long sigh of relief, his gaze on Chen Zhuo growing even more fervent.
"Ah, Xiaozhuo."
Li Jianming rubbed his hands together, his smile turning into something like a fox trying to trick a child.
"You see, you can grasp the essence of the problem in a single glance. It’s such a waste to just leave things at this stage."
Chen Zhuo stood there with his hands behind his back, a faint, harmless-looking smile on his face, listening quietly.
"The temperature’s been dropping in Huizhou these past few days, heavy snow is blocking the roads, and the Spring Festival travel rush makes the trains so crowded."
Li Jianming began his gentle persuasion.
"Why don’t you just stay at Keda for the winter break instead of going home? It’ll be great! I’ll talk to the logistics department, have the cafeteria cook for you separately. They’ll make whatever you want to eat."
Li Jianming pointed at the blackboard.
"The two of us, plus Wu Tao, we can use this one month of winter break to completely nail down this conjecture! If we publish this, it’ll shake the entire world of mathematics. What do you say?"
Chen Zhuo looked at Li Jianming’s expectant gaze, the smile at the corner of his mouth deepening slightly.
"Professor Li, I appreciate the offer."
Chen Zhuo’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried an unyielding finality that left no room for negotiation.
"But I’ve already bought my ticket. It’s for tomorrow morning."
Li Jianming didn’t give up.
"You can always refund the ticket! Academic inspiration waits for no one. It would be such a shame if you left now and lost your train of thought."
Chen Zhuo sighed. His expression became one of helplessness, tinged with a bit of a mischievous streak.
"I really can’t. There’s an emergency back home. I have to rush back and put out a fire."
"What emergency could possibly be more important than what’s on this blackboard?"
Li Jianming demanded, pointing at the blackboard and raising his voice.
Wu Tao also stopped writing and turned his head, curious.
Chen Zhuo looked at the two of them.
Chen Zhuo said slowly and deliberately.
"He’s in his second year of junior high this year. And as you know, second year is a real turning point in life. It’s when kids tend to polarize."
Li Jianming was stunned.
"The kid’s been getting a bit full of himself lately, and his mind isn’t on his studies."
Chen Zhuo continued, his tone heavy with the frustration of ’hating iron for not becoming steel.’
"If I don’t go back and watch over him during winter break, and nail his focus to his desk, he’ll definitely be in trouble for the high school entrance exams the year after next. He won’t even get into a regular high school."
Wu Tao’s mouth fell slightly agape. The chalk in his hand fell to the floor with a CLATTER, breaking in two.
Chen Zhuo gave Professor Li a slight bow.
"This conjecture on the blackboard will still be here whether we solve it a month sooner or a month later. It’s not going anywhere. But my brother’s future, if that gets delayed, it’s for a lifetime. I have to go back and sort him out. I’ll see you next semester."
Without waiting for Li Jianming to react, Chen Zhuo turned and walked out of the office.
His light footsteps echoed in the hallway.
The office was terrifyingly quiet.
Li Jianming stared at the empty doorway, stunned speechless for a long moment.
’He, a titan of the School of Mathematics, holding a conjecture that could shake the mathematical world, after using every trick of persuasion and veiled threats, had actually lost to... tutoring a failing eighth-grader for his final exams?’
Wu Tao bent down and picked up the broken piece of chalk.
He looked at the terrifying formulas on the blackboard that only Chen Zhuo could instantly comprehend, then thought about his own bloodshot eyes and thinning hair from the past two days of work.
A wave of bitter tears, the kind only an academic grunt would understand, almost burst from his eyes.
’A Ph.D. student from Keda’s School of Mathematics, and in Chen Zhuo’s mind, my importance ranks below that of a junior high kid from back home who’s about to flunk out of even getting into a regular high school.’
"Professor."
Wu Tao sniffled, his voice trembling.
"Cut the crap."
Li Jianming waved his hand irritably.
"Add the non-linear term and keep calculating! He knows to worry about his brother’s high school entrance exams, but you’re twenty-five and you can’t even expand a single matrix. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!"
Wu Tao lowered his head, clenched his jaw, and pressed the chalk firmly against the blackboard.
Chen Zhuo walked out of the Science Department building.
The snow outside was falling more heavily now. The wind whipped snowflakes against his face, bringing a dry, crisp chill.
He flipped up the hood of his jacket to cover his head and shoved his hands in his pockets.
After walking a dozen or so steps, Chen Zhuo stopped and looked back.
In the basement of the Physics Building, the hydrodynamics lab would still be glowing with bright white light. Chen Zhuo felt like he could faintly hear the low-frequency hum from the server room. Zhang Yuan and Lin Fang were probably pulling another all-nighter.
On the third floor of the Mathematics Building, the light in Li Jianming’s office was also on. Through the window, he could see the silhouette of Wu Tao waving his arms in front of the blackboard.
Chen Zhuo looked at those windows, behind which people were slaving away, and couldn’t help but smile.
He didn’t feel a shred of guilt.
’Academics are endless, but a twelve-year-old kid needs a winter break.’
Chen Zhuo wrapped his clothes tighter around himself, turned, and crunched through the snow, his steps light as he headed for the dormitory.
「Back in Dorm Room 215.」
The room was empty.
Chu Ge had gone to the internet cafe to work on his grand internet enterprise. Wang Dayong had boarded a train back to the Northeast, shouldering a fertilizer sack he’d gotten from who-knows-where. Lu Jia was in self-imposed isolation in the room across the hall.
First thing tomorrow morning, he would take the fruits of this past semester—and a belly full of mischief—back to that small city filled with the sound of firecrackers and the aroma of cooking meat.

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