On the other side of the globe, a sense of spatial and temporal dislocation was unfolding in a profoundly quiet manner.
Country M, New Jersey.
The Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
The small, red-brick building was nestled amongst ivy and a few enormous oak trees. Although the temperature outside was already quite low, the heating inside the office building was turned up so high it almost felt hot.
At the end of the third-floor corridor was Pierre’s private office.
The office was very large. Two of its walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stuffed with mathematics journals, monographs, and manuscripts in various languages.
In the center of the room, a set of dark brown leather sofas sat on a rug.
Pierre was sitting on the armchair.
He was wearing an exquisitely tailored dark gray tweed suit, forgoing a tie, the collar of his shirt slightly open.
A pair of reading glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, and in his hands, he held a stack of papers printed on A4 sheets.
It was the forty-page paper signed C. Zhuo.
On the coffee table sat a cup of black tea. The liquid was clear, unclouded by sugar or milk, with faint wisps of steam still rising from the rim.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
A gentle rap sounded on the walnut office door.
"Come in."
Pierre didn’t look up, his eyes still fixed on the line of calculation that brutally severed continuous topology with a Discrete Matrix.
The door was pushed open.
A white man in his early thirties walked in, dressed in a neat suit and holding a black leather folder.
This was Pierre’s personal academic assistant, Arthur.
"Mr. Pierre."
Arthur walked to the coffee table and stopped, his tone deeply respectful.
"I’ve confirmed all the details for your trip to Shanghai, Hua Country, next week."
Pierre turned a page of the manuscript with a soft rustle.
"Go on."
Arthur opened the folder in his hands.
"You’ll be flying first class on American Airlines from New York’s JFK Airport this Sunday evening. Your estimated arrival is Monday noon, Hua Country time, at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The conference organizers have arranged for a dedicated car and staff to meet you at the VIP channel."
Arthur’s voice was steady and methodical.
"The opening ceremony for the International Topology Symposium is scheduled for nine o’clock Tuesday morning. As the guest of honor, your keynote speech is scheduled for nine-thirty. It will be forty-five minutes long. I’ve already reformatted and printed the speech for you, and it’s in your briefcase."
Pierre didn’t speak, merely giving a slight nod to show he was listening.
"The conference lasts four days, with the closing ceremony on Friday afternoon. I’ve booked your return flight from Shanghai to New York for Saturday morning."
Arthur closed his folder and looked at Pierre.
"That’s the full itinerary. Do you see anything that needs to be changed?"
The office was silent for a few seconds.
Pierre placed the manuscript on his lap, took off his reading glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
He picked up the black tea from the coffee table and took a small sip.
"Arthur."
Pierre set down his teacup and looked up at his assistant.
"Cancel the return flight to New York on Saturday."
Arthur paused for a moment, but his excellent training kept him from immediately asking why. He simply took out a pen, ready to take notes.
"Of course, sir. What day should I postpone it to? Do the conference organizers have other private dinner arrangements for you in Shanghai?"
"No. My business with the organizers concludes on Friday. Don’t let them bother me."
Pierre leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over the stack of papers on his lap.
"I believe I still have five days of personal leave."
Pierre gazed at an abstract geometric painting on the wall. His tone was calm but carried an air of unshakeable resolve.
"I need you to look up travel options from Shanghai to Huizhou in Hua Country. Whether by train or plane, book me a ticket to Huizhou."
The pen in Arthur’s hand paused.
He quickly ran through a mental map of Hua Country’s universities and their recent academic activities.
"Huizhou?"
Arthur frowned in confusion.
"Mr. Pierre, to my knowledge, while the Hua Country Science and Technology University is in Huizhou, they aren’t hosting any international mathematics or physics symposiums anytime soon. Besides," Arthur added a reminder, "last year, Professor Delian tried to invite staff from Keda for a visit on behalf of the Advanced Research Institute, but their foreign affairs department politely declined. If you go this time without any official prior arrangement, Keda probably won’t arrange any kind of reception. What is your purpose for going there?"
Listening to his assistant’s concerns, the corner of Pierre’s mouth suddenly curved into a smile.
It was the smile of an old-school scholar who, in the midst of a long and tedious academic career, had just stumbled upon something truly interesting.
"I don’t need their reception."
Pierre reached out his right hand and gently patted the manuscript on his thigh.
"Arthur, I’ve been sitting in this chair for far too long. The papers these past few years have been getting more and more conventional, more and more polished. Everyone is so carefully stitching up the wounds of mathematics, terrified of offending some reviewer."
"But this paper is different."
He picked up the top page and pointed to the formulas on it.
"The person who wrote this is an absolute madman. Or perhaps, a stubborn butcher."
"His method of using discrete algebra to sever a continuous domain is so brutal it has an unconventional sort of beauty. It’s like taking a rusty saw to a precision-engineered clock spring. But the most frightening part is that after he saws it open, the underlying logic is so clean you can’t find a single flaw."
Pierre tossed the paper back onto his lap.
"The person capable of writing something like this is definitely not some young person raised in a greenhouse, relying on supercomputers to crunch data. This is absolutely the work of an old hand who has been through countless rough engineering applications, someone accustomed to solving problems in resource-scarce environments with the most extreme mathematical tools."
In Pierre’s mind, the image of C. Zhuo was already fully formed.
He pictured a reclusive old mathematician with a full head of silver hair, clad in a faded Zhongshan suit. A cantankerous and opinionated man, hidden away like a giant panda in the heart of Huizhou by the Hua Country government for some classified project.
"I don’t want to meet him through official channels. That would just lead to a pile of tedious diplomatic platitudes."
Pierre stood up and walked to the window, gazing out at the early winter scenery of New Jersey.
"I want to go as an ordinary foreign tourist and wander around the Keda campus. Perhaps I’ll run into him in some old classroom thick with chalk dust, or maybe in their library."
Pierre turned back to Arthur, his smile tinged with the unique pride of someone at the apex of the academic pyramid.
"I want to meet this savage old codger. Even if it’s just to find a blackboard, point out the ugliness of his methods to his face, and then have a huge argument with him, it would still be far more interesting than staying in New York reading those boring papers."
Seeing the light in Pierre’s eyes, Arthur knew his boss had made up his mind.
Once a top-tier scholar like him gets an idea in his head, no one can talk him out of it.
"I understand, Mr. Pierre."
Arthur closed his folder.
"I will arrange your trip to Huizhou for Saturday. Since it’s a personal trip, I’ll do my best to book the most comfortable mode of transport and arrange a quiet hotel for you near Huizhou University."
"Nothing too ostentatious. Keep it simple."
Pierre waved his hand dismissively.
"Very well, sir. I won’t disturb you any further."
Arthur gave a slight bow, then turned and exited the office, closing the walnut door behind him.
The office returned to its previous silence.
Pierre walked to his desk, picked up the still-warm cup of black tea, and took a small sip.
His gaze fell once more upon the forty-page manuscript.
"C. Zhuo."
Pierre murmured the name aloud.
He was filled with anticipation.
In an age saturated with computer-assisted proofs and bureaucratic formalities, to encounter someone who still upheld the virtues of classical, brutal elegance was truly a pleasure worth crossing half the globe for.
Pierre was already starting to formulate a plan in his mind. What would be the perfect high-dimensional topological problem to use as his opening line, to test the old man’s limits?
「At this very moment.」
Across the ocean in Hua Country, Huizhou.
Chen Zhuo walked up to the building for Keda’s School of Physics.
He was holding a half-eaten roasted sweet potato, chewing on the sweet, caramelized flesh.
His new Nokia phone sat quietly in the pocket of his school uniform.
He had no idea that over ten thousand kilometers away, a world-renowned titan of mathematics, his head full of romanticized images of a white-haired old hermit, was excitedly preparing to storm over for a showdown of minds.
Chen Zhuo swallowed the last bite of sweet potato, crumpled the old newspaper it was wrapped in into a ball, and accurately tossed it into a trash can on the side of the road.
He dusted off his hands.
’Alright. The next Chapter starts with tackling that dead end in the Hodge Conjecture.’

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