Back in his office, he didn’t take a break.
He turned on the computer on his desk and connected to the campus network. As the case fan whirred, he opened an overseas academic database.
He typed "Pierre" into the search box.
The page loaded slowly, the progress bar inching forward.
The results confirmed his suspicions from the night before.
Pierre hadn’t disappeared. He was now sixty-five and still held his lofty position at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
Li Jianming clicked on a few academic reports and peer reviews about him.
The words painted a picture of an arrogant, eccentric old man with an absolutely atrocious temper.
He rarely took on students, never attended tedious social gatherings, and even ignored review invitations from many top-tier academic journals.
He was like a tyrant guarding his own castle, filled with undisguised contempt for the conventional, by-the-book mathematical research of the outside world.
Li Jianming leaned back in his chair, staring at the long string of titles on the screen.
The gap was just too vast.
On one side, an ordinary university professor from the heartland of Hua Country, who rarely even had the chance to attend conferences abroad. On the other, a titan who held a Fields Medal and sat at the pinnacle of the mathematical world.
What separated them wasn’t just the Pacific Ocean, but an academic barrier an ordinary person could never hope to cross.
「Two in the afternoon.」
Li Jianming changed into a clean set of clothes, left the Mathematics Building, and crossed the sports field to the university’s main administration building.
He went straight to the third floor and pushed open the door to the Office of Foreign Affairs.
"Is Director Wang in?"
Li Jianming knocked on the open door.
The middle-aged man behind the desk looked up and hurried to his feet.
"Well, Professor Li! What a rare pleasure. Come in, have a seat. Can I get you some water?"
"I’m fine."
Li Jianming waved his hand dismissively and sat on the guest sofa across from the desk.
"Old Wang, I’m here to ask you about something. If I wanted to go to the United States for an academic exchange at Princeton, what would the process be?"
Director Wang froze for a second before pulling a document out of his drawer.
"Princeton? That’s wonderful news! Have they sent you a formal letter of invitation? Is it for a conference or a visiting scholar position?"
"There’s no invitation."
Li Jianming looked at him.
"It would be a private trip. I want to consult with someone on a few academic matters."
The smile on Director Wang’s face froze.
He put the document down and sighed.
"Professor Li, let me be blunt. It’s 2004. Going to the United States isn’t like buying a train ticket to the Provincial City. Without an official letter of invitation from an American research institution, you won’t even get in the door for a visa interview at the embassy."
"Is there no way to bend the rules at all?"
"None whatsoever."
Director Wang shook his head.
"Even if you had an invitation, the school would have to file a report, the university would have to grant approval, and you’d still need to pass a political background check. The entire process, moving at top speed, would take three months at a minimum."
Li Jianming sat on the sofa without a word.
Seeing Li Jianming’s ashen expression, Director Wang felt a pang of sympathy and added,
"Professor Li, if you’re really set on going, you should contact an acquaintance over there right away. Even the simplest invitation for an academic exchange would be enough."
Li Jianming stood up.
"I understand. Thank you, Old Wang."
He turned and walked out of the Office of Foreign Affairs.
’An acquaintance?’
’Where was he supposed to find an acquaintance to pass a message to that arrogant academic tyrant?’
’And even if he did, why would a man like that send an invitation to some professor from Hua Country he’d never even heard of?’
’It was a dead end.’
「The next day.」
Li Jianming locked himself in his office.
At 7:30 in the morning, the sound of the cleaning lady’s cart echoed from the hallway.
"KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK."
A knock came at the office door.
"Professor Li, cleaning service! Could you open the door? I need to empty your trash can," the cleaning lady called from outside.
"No need to clean!"
Li Jianming’s voice, tinged with irritation, came through the door.
"Don’t come in for the next few days! And unless I call for you, don’t touch anything in my office!"
The woman outside muttered something under her breath before pushing her cart and walking away.
Li Jianming sat at his desk. A thick stack of Keda letterhead lay before him.
He uncapped his fountain pen and stared down at the blank sheet of paper.
Since he couldn’t go to the United States, his only option was to try writing a letter to the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
He wrote the first line in English: *Dear Professor Pierre*.
After writing that single line, his pen froze.
A drop of ink bled into the paper.
He didn’t know what to write next.
If he was too general and just wrote some polite, deferential inquiries, a man with Pierre’s temper would glance once at a letter from an unknown university and toss it straight into the trash.
But to explain the problem clearly, he would have to include the core idea of Chen Zhuo’s discrete truncation in the letter.
’But that was too dangerous.’
Chen Zhuo’s incomplete derivation was the opening gambit for the Hodge Conjecture. Any expert would recognize its immense value at a single glance.
If he wrote down the core formulas, sealed them in an envelope, and sent them across the ocean, it would be tantamount to handing Chen Zhuo’s trump card directly to Pierre.
’What if Pierre took the idea and never replied? What if he used the return address and Princeton’s resources to fly over and snatch the talent for himself?’
Li Jianming’s mind was in turmoil.
He snatched the sheet of paper, with only its single-line salutation, crumpled it into a ball, and slammed it into the wastepaper basket by his feet.
He pulled out another sheet.
He wrote a couple of lines about the background of fluid dynamics as a pretext, but it didn’t feel right. He crumpled that one up and tossed it away too.
For the rest of the day, the only sounds in the office were the tearing of paper and the crumpling of paper balls.

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