A corner on the third floor of the old library had been in the same state for several days straight.
The table was piled with over a dozen Russian and English journals, beside which sat two stacks of A4 scratch paper, completely filled with writing.
Chen Zhuo sat by the window, a pen in his hand.
The sky outside was overcast. The wind rustled through the crown of the old camphor tree, and a few withered, yellow leaves spiraled down onto the windowsill.
Chen Zhuo leaned back, his back pressing against the peeling paint of the chair.
He had been sitting here for a full six days.
Ever since leaving the School of Physics’s underground lab that day, he had practically cut off all social contact. Aside from returning to his dorm to sleep, he spent all his time sitting right here.
The scratch paper before him was covered in diagrams of various topological structures, all attempts at optimizing the mesh.
He had tried many methods.
He had tried enlarging the mesh in non-core areas, introducing more complex penalty functions to merge nodes, and even adding time-dimensional weights to the matrix.
But every derivation, when taken to its final step, led to a dead end.
The results spit out by the machine didn’t lie.
Forty million nodes. It was like a mountain pressing down on his head. As long as you acknowledged the existence of those forty million nodes, no matter how you optimized the algorithm, the computational load for multi-order matrix multiplication was still an astronomical figure.
Today’s personal computers and servers simply couldn’t clear that hurdle.
Chen Zhuo set down his pen and took a sip from the water cup beside him.
He looked at the table full of discarded drafts, but he didn’t tear at his hair in frustration or crumple the pages into a ball and hurl it at the wall.
He simply, and very objectively, reached a conclusion in his own mind.
’This path has reached its end.’
Within the confines of this physical framework, he had exhausted every solution his current level of mathematical knowledge could provide.
Chen Zhuo capped his pen, gathered the sheets of scratch paper on the table, and stacked them neatly. He organized the journals he’d borrowed by their call numbers, hugged the pile to his chest, and stood up.
He decided to get a change of scenery and some fresh air.
Cradling the books, he walked past rows of tall bookshelves and down the stairs.
Outside the library, the air was damp and cold from a recent rain. Chen Zhuo followed a path through campus, walking at a leisurely pace.
He didn’t head back to his dorm. Instead, he rounded a corner and walked toward the small, red-brick building of the School of Mathematics.
「The second floor of the School of Mathematics building.」
The hallway was quiet. Chen Zhuo walked to the end of it and pushed open the door to Li Jianming’s office.
The rich aroma of Tieguanyin tea, mixed with the distinct smell of a running printer, washed over him.
The office was a bit messy.
Li Jianming sat behind his wide desk, reading glasses perched on his nose. He was leaning slightly forward, right hand on the mouse, clicking away at his computer screen.
"Refresh... still nothing."
Li Jianming muttered under his breath.
Near the small sofa across from the desk, Wu Tao was squatting on the floor, watching an old HP printer spit out paper. He held a stapler in one hand, a pen cap clenched between his teeth.
Hearing the door open, they both looked up simultaneously.
"Chen Zhuo?"
Wu Tao took the pen cap from his mouth and placed the freshly printed page on the coffee table.
"Well, look who it is. Aren’t you supposed to be over at the School of Physics, working on that wind tunnel project for them?"
Chen Zhuo walked in and set the journals he was carrying on an empty chair.
"I hit a bit of a bottleneck. Figured I’d take a walk."
As he spoke, Chen Zhuo walked over to the water cooler and, with practiced ease, made himself a cup of tea.
Li Jianming tore his eyes away from the screen, took off his reading glasses, and tossed them on the desk. He then picked up his purple clay teapot and took a sip.
"A bottleneck? Your dimension-reduction matrix isn’t working anymore?" Li Jianming asked with a smile.
"It works, but I’m completely limited by the hardware."
Chen Zhuo carried his teacup over to the sofa and sat down.
He glanced at the thick stack of printer paper on the coffee table, which was covered in dense blocks of English text and mathematical formulas.
"Working on your dissertation?" Chen Zhuo asked Wu Tao.
Wu Tao sighed, plopped down on the carpet, and rubbed his aching neck.
"Yeah. I’m rushing to make the deadline for the winter defense session in November."
Wu Tao pointed at the pile of paper.
"The content was done a while ago. I’ve spent the past few days just wrestling with the layout. The university’s formatting requirements are ridiculously rigid. If a chart or table is off by even a little, you have to reprint everything."
"Any news from the top journal?" Chen Zhuo asked, turning to Li Jianming.
At the mention of this, an irrepressible smile immediately broke through the fatigue on Li Jianming’s face.
"The *Mathematical Annals* sent a letter last time. They said the peer review feedback has been compiled, and there are no major revisions required. The official acceptance email should be arriving any day now."
Li Jianming pointed at the computer.
"I’ve been sitting here with my inbox open all day, just waiting."
Wu Tao chimed in from the side.
"As soon as that official letter of acceptance from the *Mathematical Annals* arrives, my doctoral defense will be a mere formality. The School has already reserved an ’outstanding graduate’ spot for me."
Chen Zhuo saw the unconcealed excitement in Wu Tao’s eyes, then looked at Li Jianming’s expression of profound, fatherly pride.
The atmosphere in the office was charged, buzzing with the excitement and anticipation of reaching the finish line.
Chen Zhuo lowered his head and took a sip of tea.
"That’s great."
Chen Zhuo set down his cup, his voice even and unhurried.
He looked at Wu Tao’s messy hair, and a slight smile touched his lips.
"Still, Wu Tao, you should probably get a haircut before your defense. With your hair like this, combined with all those homology group derivations in your dissertation, the blind reviewers might start to worry about your mental stability."
Wu Tao touched his hair, which was almost covering his ears. He froze for a second, then laughed and playfully shot back.

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