"You’ve worked hard these past two weeks."
On the sofa.
Hearing this, Wu Tao felt like a deflated ball. The nerves that had been stretched taut for the past two weeks finally went completely slack.
He didn’t offer any of the customary polite denials.
He let out a long, heavy breath, his back sinking completely into the sofa. The corners of his mouth turned up uncontrollably.
"As long as you think it’s okay."
Wu Tao’s voice was soft, laced with a rasp of profound relief.
"While writing this part, I was losing my hair in clumps. If I couldn’t figure it out, I was going to have to consider changing my major."
Chen Zhuo smiled, averted his gaze, and continued flipping through the pages.
「A little over half an hour later.」
Chen Zhuo turned the last page and saw the symbol that marked the end of the proof.
He closed the thick final draft, carefully aligning its edges.
"I’ve read through the whole thing. The logic is airtight, without any holes."
Chen Zhuo looked at Li Jianming.
"We can submit it directly."
Li Jianming set down his teacup and nodded.
The old professor turned to face the computer on his desk.
A Word document was open on the screen.
It was the submission letter for Princeton’s *Mathematical Annals*, along with the paper’s English abstract.
Li Jianming’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, a little hesitant.
"The final draft is fine," Li Jianming said, staring at the screen. "But this introduction and abstract... I feel like they’re lacking something."
Wu Tao forced himself to sit up from the sofa and walked over to look at the screen.
Li Jianming tapped the keyboard a few times, deleting a line of text.
"The scope of this paper is just too broad."
Li Jianming’s gaze was fixed on the few lines of English.
"We’re using the weapons of algebraic topology in the discrete domain to forcibly deconstruct a traditional analysis problem in the continuous domain. When the editorial department at Princeton’s *Mathematical Annals* receives the manuscript, their first task is to find matching reviewers.
If we can’t get straight to the heart of the continuous-to-discrete transition in the abstract, they’ll most likely default to sending the manuscript for blind review to that group of old-school scholars in traditional calculus and analysis."
Li Jianming sighed.
"If it really falls into the hands of those stubborn analysts, they’ll definitely go over our treatment of continuity with a magnifying glass. They’ll use their old system to measure our new rules. By then, just arguing with them over the foundational logic and theoretical framework will burn half a year."
Looking at the English text on the screen, Wu Tao also frowned.
It was true.
The abstract was written by the book—rigorous and precise.
But in this kind of top-tier academic clash that spanned different schools of thought, "by the book" often meant losing your voice. What they needed wasn’t a safe, conventional summary, but an uncompromising academic declaration of war.
Chen Zhuo stood up and walked behind Li Jianming.
He glanced at the few paragraphs Li Jianming had written on the screen.
Then, Chen Zhuo turned his head, his gaze falling on a hardcover notebook at the edge of the desk.
He casually took a black gel pen from Li Jianming’s pen holder, pulled the notebook toward him, and flipped to a blank page.
He didn’t sit, simply leaning over slightly.
The tip of the pen touched the paper with almost no hesitation.
Flowing English letters quickly took shape on the page.
Both Li Jianming’s and Wu Tao’s attention was drawn to Chen Zhuo’s actions.
Chen Zhuo didn’t write any complex mathematical formulas, no homology groups, no fiber bundles.
He only wrote three short sentences.
The first line pointed out the inevitable collapse of continuity in infinite-dimensional networks.
The second line stated the philosophical paradox of local chaos and global conservation in discrete topological spaces.
The third line delivered the paper’s final verdict: the absolute dominion of algebraic invariants over geometric divergence.
After writing the period at the end of the last word, Chen Zhuo capped the pen and casually tossed it back into the pen holder.
He pushed the hardcover notebook in front of Li Jianming.
"Teacher Li, see if these three sentences will work as an opening."
Li Jianming looked down at the notebook.
Li Jianming’s eyes swept over the three lines of English.
Once.
Twice.
Li Jianming’s eyes slowly lit up.
He didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he reached out and tapped his fingers firmly on the desk twice.
"Cuts right to the heart of it."
Li Jianming looked up at Chen Zhuo, his tone filled with unconcealed admiration.
"’Absolute dominion’... a brilliant choice. These three sentences, without a single mathematical symbol, have laid bare the entire forty-page skeleton of this paper. This isn’t an abstract; it’s a direct declaration of war on the entire school of analysis!"
Li Jianming turned back around and placed his hands on the keyboard, the composure and dominance of an academic titan rekindled in his eyes.
"We’ll open with these three sentences. With this tone set, as long as the editors at Princeton aren’t blind, they’ll understand the magnitude of this paper. Since we’re the ones rewriting the rules, even if they have to move heaven and earth, they’ll have to persuade those reclusive giants of algebraic topology to come out of the woodwork and meet this challenge!"
The sharp sound of keystrokes echoed in the office.
Li Jianming quickly typed the three lines at the very beginning of the document.
Immediately after, the cursor moved to the author byline at the bottom of the document.
Li Jianming didn’t pause.
His fingers steadily typed a string of letters on the keyboard.
Zhuo Chen.
First author.
Next was the corresponding author tag, followed by Li Jianming’s own name and email.
Finally, the second author: Tao Wu.
After typing this, Li Jianming stopped, moved the mouse, and clicked save.
The old professor turned around and looked at Chen Zhuo, who was standing beside the desk.

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