This was a Yangtze River Scholar from Zhendan University, Professor Lin.
In his early forties and the prime of his academic career, he regularly handled complex nonlinear dynamical systems and was one of the country’s leading figures at the forefront of the intersection between pure and applied mathematics.
"Haven’t rested, Xiaolin? Did you see the fax from this morning?" Li Jianming asked.
"I saw it. I didn’t even have time for lunch."
Professor Lin took a deep breath on the other end of the line.
"Teacher Li, I don’t know which genius wrote this manuscript, but this line of thinking... it’s absolutely brilliant."
Professor Lin’s tone carried a clear, zealous fervor.
"Isolating the Singularity, forcibly aligning the boundary with a dimensional reduction homomorphism... in terms of engineering truncation, the efficiency is terrifyingly high. I just tried applying it to a fluid dynamics model I’m working on. Data that would have originally taken a supercomputer half a month to run converges in just a few hours with this method."
Hearing this, the weight on Li Jianming’s heart lifted slightly.
’The middle generation certainly has a keen eye.’
"In that case, if we were to dig deeper with this method, to probe those more fundamental algebraic cycles, what would be the path forward?"
Li Jianming posed his most pressing question.
The other end of the line suddenly went quiet.
The excited, rapid pace of his speech vanished, replaced by a long silence.
"Xiaolin?"
Li Jianming prompted.
"Teacher Li."
Professor Lin’s voice came through again, this time laced with a deep sense of helplessness and a wry laugh.
"Let me be frank with you."
"This technique looks like engineering truncation from our field of applied mathematics, but its framework isn’t. Underneath, it requires an extremely deep and abstract foundation of modern pure mathematics theory. Without that foundation, this thing is a castle in the air. Dig just a little deeper, and the whole thing will collapse."
Professor Lin paused, his tone becoming completely earnest.
"My skill level is only enough to be a user. If you ask me to run some data with it, I can do that. But if you’re asking me to shore up its foundation in pure mathematics, to be a trailblazer for this theory..."
"I can’t do it."
"Among all the people in interdisciplinary studies in the country, no one can do it. This requires a pure mathematics heavyweight who has truly mastered modern algebraic geometry and is unbelievably audacious, to dare take on this challenge."
The hand Li Jianming was holding the receiver with froze in mid-air.
His fingers slowly tightened.
"Alright, I understand. Thank you, Xiaolin."
Li Jianming hung up the phone.
The office was so quiet you could hear the second hand of the wall clock ticking.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the somewhat blackened fluorescent light on the ceiling.
The old academician had called it heresy.
The most cutting-edge of the middle generation admitted he couldn’t handle its foundations.
The stubbornness in Li Jianming’s heart began to show cracks.
The pinnacle of the domestic academic circle he was so proud of seemed so low, so powerless, before this single, incomplete manuscript from Chen Zhuo.
But he still didn’t want to admit defeat.
He pulled open a drawer and glanced at the last name in the notebook.
Yanjing University, Professor Wei.
This person was a maverick.
He had spent years as a visiting scholar at major research institutes across Europe, only returning to the country a few years ago to live in seclusion at Yanda.
He rarely published papers or supervised students, but everyone in the domestic pure mathematics circle knew his vision was unparalleled. He was one of the very few in the country who could keep pace with Grothendieck’s school of modern algebraic geometry.
Li Jianming pinned all his hopes on this final phone call.
The afternoon light slowly dimmed.
The sun had set, and the sky outside the window had turned a deep, grayish-blue.
Li Jianming didn’t turn on the lights, simply sitting alone and waiting in the dim office.
Six in the afternoon.
The red landline rang for the third time.
In the dim room, the ringing sounded somewhat piercing.
Li Jianming snatched up the receiver.
"Hello, Old Wei."
The call connected.
But there was no sound from the other end, only faint breathing and the soft rustling of paper.
Li Jianming didn’t press him.
He just held the receiver quietly, listening to the silence on the other end.
The silence lasted for a full thirty seconds.
After thirty seconds, a long sigh came through the receiver.
"Old Li." Professor Wei’s voice was a little hoarse. "This thing... you didn’t write it, did you?"
"I didn’t," Li Jianming said without beating around the bush. "A friend stumbled upon it. He’s hit a wall and is looking for a way to move forward."
"Your friend?"
Professor Wei let out a soft laugh on the other end, a laugh tinged with a sober chill.
"Cut the crap. Those old colleagues of yours are all dutiful folks who live by classical algebra. Who among them would have the guts to perform this kind of barbaric surgery directly on a topological space?"
Li Jianming didn’t speak, tacitly agreeing.
"I’ve been staring at this page you faxed me all afternoon."
Professor Wei picked up the glass of water on his desk and took a sip, his voice growing serious again.
"Old Li, do you want to hear the truth?"
"Speak."
Li Jianming uttered a single word.
"I can’t teach it."
Professor Wei delivered the final verdict.
"Not only can I not teach it, but no one in the entire country can."
Those words were like a sledgehammer, striking Li Jianming right in the chest.
It shattered his pride, his protectiveness, his stubbornness.
"Why?"
Li Jianming’s voice was a bit hoarse.
"Because the soil here is too safe."
Professor Wei’s words were sharp and merciless, getting straight to the point.
"For the past few decades, our domestic mathematics community has been desperately learning the rules of the West. To catch up, we’ve all been cautiously adhering to the bottom lines of continuity and smoothness. An environment like this can’t produce something so heretical it dares to poke a hole in the sky."
"This method is too extreme. Without an incredibly vast and advanced framework of modern algebra to support it, touching it is a death sentence."
Li Jianming was silent for a long time.
"So it’s a stillborn project?"
he asked, unwilling to accept it.
Another rustle of paper came from the other end of the line.
"Old Li, while I can’t teach it, this technique... it looks familiar."
Professor Wei’s pace of speech slowed, as if he were recalling something from the distant past.
Li Jianming’s eyes flew open. He sat up straight in the darkness.
"You’ve seen it before?"
"In the early nineties, when I was a visiting scholar in Europe, a battle of titans erupted in the Western algebraic topology community."
Professor Wei’s voice carried the unique sense of history found in academia.
"At the time, there was a small, very radical group of scholars who also advocated for using these kinds of extremely crude discrete tools to directly slice up continuous topological domains. They felt the classical methods were too cumbersome and wanted to rebuild the algebraic geometry toolbox from the ground up."
"And what happened?" Li Jianming pressed.
"Later, because the underlying logic was too difficult to make self-consistent and many of the holes couldn’t be filled, this group was branded as lunatics by the orthodox school and gradually faded into obscurity."
Professor Wei paused.
"But the foundation of their barbaric framework... it truly did exist."
"Where can I find it?" Li Jianming’s breathing grew ragged.
"Go look through the original issues of *Inventiones mathematicae* from around ’98 to ’00. The progenitor of this kind of discrete truncation left traces in the journals from those years."
After speaking, Professor Wei added one last thing.
"Old Li, no matter who wrote this page, if he’s still young, have him dig up that piece of history. It might be the only path forward for him."
"Okay. I owe you one, Old Wei."

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