This is what a mathematician should be doing.
The train pulled out of the city and entered the plains of Jiangnan.
The sky gradually darkened.
The sun sank below the horizon, and the scenery outside turned into a blurry, dark blue.
The dim overhead lights in the carriage flickered on.
An attendant pushing a cart came by, using an aluminum kettle to fill the teacups on the table with hot water. Steam rose, fogging up the window pane.
Pierre picked up his teacup, warming his hands on it.
The train made a rhythmic clatter on the tracks.
"CLACK, CLACK."
「At the same time.」
More than two hundred kilometers away from this train.
On another, parallel set of tracks.
A green-skinned train with hard seats, traveling from Huizhou to Shanghai, was speeding through the night.
This carriage was ten times more crowded than Pierre’s soft sleeper car.
The aisle was packed with people, the luggage racks were crammed full, and even the space under the seats was stuffed with woven bags.
The air in the carriage was thick with the smell of braised beef noodles and sunflower seed shells.
Li Jianming sat in a hard seat by the window.
Across from him was a couple with a small child. The child was squirming restlessly in its mother’s arms, letting out sharp cries from time to time.
The people next to him were loudly playing cards.
Li Jianming seemed deaf to the surrounding clamor.
He sat ramrod straight, his back perfectly erect, the buttons of his old trench coat done up to the very top.
One of his hands never left his chest, pressing firmly against the envelope in his inner pocket through his clothes.
Inside the envelope were two pages of Chen Zhuo’s partial manuscript.
Li Jianming looked out the window.
Outside was an impenetrable blackness. The glass reflected his wrinkled, unshaven face and a pair of eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.
In truth, he was exhausted.
From rummaging through journals in the basement, to desperately checking on visas, to frantically digging through trash cans last night, he couldn’t remember the last time he had closed his eyes.
But he couldn’t sleep.
He didn’t dare to sleep.
He went over the speech he would give when he faced Pierre again and again in his mind.
’I’m just an ordinary university professor.’
’This is something written by an old friend of mine back in China who wishes to remain anonymous.’
’He’s stuck, can’t solve it, and asked me to have Professor Pierre take a look.’
Li Jianming recited the lines in his head.
He had rehearsed every word, every pause, even every helpless expression, countless times.
He had to deceive that old lunatic who sat at the pinnacle of the world of mathematics.
He had to get Pierre, completely off his guard, to reveal the modern algebraic logic underlying discrete truncation.
’If Pierre just writes a single formula on the blackboard, if he just says one crucial guiding sentence...’
...then he, Li Jianming, could follow that thread and map out the entire path.
It was like walking a tightrope.
If Pierre sensed something was wrong, if he followed the clues and guessed this was the work of a young person...
...the consequences would be unimaginable.
Li Jianming took a deep breath of the carriage’s foul air.
He took his hand from his chest and rubbed his cold cheeks.
No matter how difficult, he had to do it.
For Keda, and for Hua Country to hold on to this once-in-a-century seedling.
Even if it meant complete humiliation at the Shanghai conference, being trampled on by his foreign peers, he had to pave this path for Chen Zhuo.
"WOOO—"
The train whistle blew, its sound tearing through the night sky.
Two green-skinned trains.
One heading east, toward the bustling city of Shanghai.
One heading west, toward the heartland of Huizhou.
On this ordinary early winter night, at a desolate railway intersection.
"RUMBLE—"
The two trains, with immense wind pressure and the thundering vibration of the tracks, brushed past each other in the darkness.
In the instant their windows crossed, the lights from each train painted blurry streaks across the other’s glass.
Pierre was looking at the manuscript on his table when the water in his teacup rippled violently.
Li Jianming was staring out the window when the headlights of the oncoming train flashed in his eyes, and he instinctively shut them.
Just a few seconds.
The encounter was over.
The sound of the tracks became monotonous again.
Pierre leaned back against his pillow, listening to the fading rumble. He closed his eyes, his mind filled with the image of that old Chinese man named C. Zhuo flying into a rage.
Li Jianming opened his eyes and pressed his hand back on the envelope at his chest, his eyes glinting with a do-or-die calculation.
They were both hurtling toward what they each believed to be their destination.
Driven by the most extreme thirst for truth.
And by calculations that were diametrically opposed.
In the parallel night, they traveled further and further apart.

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