Let’s go back in time two days.
Dawn was just breaking when the green-skinned train pulled into the platform at Huizhou Station.
The doors opened, and a tide of people, a clamor of various dialects rising from the crowd, flooded along the platform toward the exit.
Pierre, carrying his small brown leather suitcase, moved slowly forward with the current of people.
He had changed into a simple light gray jacket, left unbuttoned, with a pullover underneath.
If one were to ignore his striking foreign features, he looked no different from any ordinary old man, recently retired and out for a bit of travel.
He left the station and hailed a red Xiali taxi at the edge of the plaza.
The driver, a man in his thirties, glanced at Pierre and asked in heavily accented Mandarin.
"Foreigner? Where to?"
Pierre didn’t understand Chinese.
He took a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it over. On it, Arthur had written the name and address of a modest hotel not too far from Keda.
The driver glanced at it, nodded, and stepped on the gas.
The window was rolled down halfway, and the cool October morning wind brushed against his face. Pierre leaned back in his seat, watching the streetscape roll by.
There were none of Shanghai’s towering glass curtain walls, no wide, straight, ten-lane boulevards.
The streets here were lined with tall plane trees, their leaves tinged with yellow.
The roadsides were dotted with vendors selling breakfast from their tricycles, plumes of white steam billowing into the cold air. Commuters on bicycles weaved through gaps in traffic, the crisp chime of their bells ringing out one after another.
Watching all this, the corners of Pierre’s mouth turned up in a slight smile.
He liked this feeling.
It was real. It was alive.
’This is the kind of place where that old fellow should live—the kind of man who can cleave open topological space from the rubble of low-level engineering with nothing but a rusty saw.’
Upon arriving at the hotel, Pierre used his passport to check in at the front desk.
The young woman at the front desk spoke halting English, but Pierre patiently slowed his speech and even used hand gestures, a gentle smile never leaving his face.
After getting his room key, he went upstairs, took a hot shower, and changed into clean clothes.
He lay on the bed for a while, but he wasn’t sleepy.
In fact, he felt wide awake.
He glanced at his watch: half past nine in the morning.
He grabbed his room key and left the hotel.
Two blocks down the street, the old gate of Hua Country Science and Technology University came into view.
There was no grand gatehouse, just a few weathered concrete pillars bearing the university’s nameplate. Students milled in and out in twos and threes, some clutching books, others carrying thermoses for hot water.
Pierre clasped his hands behind his back and strolled leisurely inside.
Stout camphor trees lined the campus, their canopies obscuring much of the sky. Bulletin boards by the path were plastered with handwritten posters and lecture announcements.
He followed the main path, glancing at the signs along the way. Though he couldn’t read the Chinese characters, they were accompanied by English translations.
"Department of Mathematics"
Pierre followed the sign’s direction, turning onto a side path that led him to an old red brick building.
The building’s doors were open, and students occasionally hurried past, textbooks tucked under their arms.
Pierre walked up the steps and entered the building.
In the lobby on the ground floor, a large blackboard displayed recent departmental notices. Beside it was a glass display case containing the photos and biographies of the professors and associate professors of the School of Mathematics.
Pierre stood before the display case, his gaze scanning the photos one by one.
He was looking for that name.
Jianming Li.
Soon, he found it in the middle of the second row. The man in the photograph was wearing a white shirt, his hair neatly combed.
Pierre looked at the office number listed below the photo: 302.
He took the stairs to the third floor. The hallway was somewhat dim, and most of the doors on either side were closed. From the one or two offices with open doors, he could hear the sounds of discussion.
He arrived at the door of office 302.
The door was locked.
Pierre didn’t knock. He turned, and just then, he saw a young man carrying several thick textbooks approaching from the other end of the hall.
Pierre approached him with a smile.
"Excuse me, young man."
Pierre spoke in English, his voice gentle and his words slow.
The student stopped, taken aback for a moment, before replying in somewhat stiff English.
"Hello, sir. Can I help you with something?"
"I’m looking for Professor Li Jianming, whose office this is. Is he not in today?"
Pierre pointed to the number plate on door 302.
The student glanced at the door.
"Professor Li isn’t here. He’s on leave."
"On leave?"
Pierre was surprised.
"Where has he gone? I came to discuss some academic matters with him."
The student thought for a moment, as if searching for the right words.
"Professor Li went to Shanghai for a major international topology conference. He won’t be on campus for the next couple of days, and his TA is covering his classes."
When Pierre heard this, the expression on his face froze for a moment.
Then, unable to stop himself, he let out a soft laugh.
His laughter echoed in the hallway.
The student stared, baffled, at the old foreign man, whose shoulders were shaking with laughter.
"Thank you, young man. I understand."
Pierre gave a wave and headed for the stairs.
He shook his head to himself as he descended the stairs.
’How absurd.’
’He himself had despised that circus, with its commercialism and tedious presentations, so much that he’d ripped off his name badge and fled.’
’And yet this old fellow—the one capable of being the corresponding author on a paper that could handle that kind of rogue truncation—had actually run off to join the spectacle?’
’It seemed even the most brilliant scholars couldn’t escape the trappings of worldly fame and fortune.’
Pierre walked out of the Mathematics Building and glanced up at the sun.
’No matter.’
’Li Jianming might be gone, but there were two other people on that paper.’
’According to academic convention, the first author is typically the one who contributes the core idea, while the second author is usually the grunt responsible for calculations and data management.’
He decided to wander around campus for a while. He would take his time with the search. He had five days, after all. There was no need to rush.
「The next day.」
Pierre woke early. He bought a cup of soy milk and a steamed bun from a breakfast stall near his hotel and, mimicking the locals, ate as he walked.
Today, he planned to check out the School of Physics.
He remembered Delian mentioning that the suggested improvements for that physics preprint had originated from Keda. Perhaps the person responsible spent their time at the School of Physics.
The Keda campus wasn’t large; after strolling for half an hour, he found the building for the School of Physics.
He stood under a tree outside the building, watching the students come and go.
A young man emerged from the building’s entrance.
He was wearing a simple gray jacket, and his hair was a tousled mess.
He had obvious dark circles under his eyes and clutched a roll of schematics. He walked with an unsteady gait, looking for all the world like someone who had just pulled an all-nighter and was running on fumes.
The young man walked over to the trash can under the tree, tossed in a piece of scrap paper he was holding, and let out a long yawn.
Pierre watched him, and his intuition screamed that this was a graduate student who practically lived in a lab or spent all his time wrestling with data.
He stepped forward.
"Hello."
Pierre offered with a smile.
The young man turned, rubbing his eyes. He looked at the old foreigner in front of him and did his best to pull himself together.
"Hello. Looking for someone?"
"Yes, I am."
This time, Pierre used what he felt was a perfectly safe excuse.
"I’m a professor from abroad who does interdisciplinary research. A while back, I came across a physics preprint online concerning the divergence problem in continuous calculus. It utilized a remarkably elegant mathematical model."
Pierre looked the young man in the eye.
"The author of that preprint was credited as C. Zhuo. I happen to be traveling in Hua Country and am quite interested in the model, so I hoped to pay the professor a visit. Do you know where I might find his office?"
Upon hearing the words "physics preprint" and "C. Zhuo," the student’s unfocused gaze sharpened slightly.
This was Wu Tao.
Wu Tao had just pulled an all-nighter helping a friend organize some data, and his brain was practically in a state of suspended animation.
He looked at the old foreigner and didn’t think much of the encounter.
He had overheard in Li Jianming’s office that Chen Zhuo had published a preprint through the School of Physics, and that it had attracted email inquiries from foreign academics. So, a foreigner stopping by to look for him seemed perfectly normal.
Wu Tao shook his head.
"He doesn’t have an office."
Pierre raised an eyebrow slightly.
’No office?’
"Then where does he usually conduct his research?"
Wu Tao raised a hand and pointed toward the east side of campus.
"The old library. Just follow this road until you see a red brick building covered in ivy, that’s the one. He doesn’t really hang around the department buildings. He prefers to read and study by himself in a corner on the third floor of the old library. You can go look for him there. He should be there around this time."
Wu Tao finished speaking and yawned again.
"You’ll have to find him yourself. I’ve got to get some sleep."
"Thank you. Sweet dreams."
Pierre nodded warmly.
Wu Tao pulled his jacket tighter around himself and shuffled off toward the dormitories.
Pierre stood where he was, gazing in the direction Wu Tao had just indicated.
The image of the ’old fellow’ in his mind grew clearer, more fleshed out.
’He has no office.’
’He disdains spending time in the stuffy, bureaucratic department buildings.’
’He hides away in a corner of the old library, reading, like a scholarly hermit in quiet cultivation.’
’This was the very picture of an academic hermit, one who treats fame and fortune like dirt beneath his feet.’
’Only someone with such a disposition could remain impervious to outside distractions, cleaving through complex superficialities with a single stroke to strike at the very essence of mathematics.’
Pierre clasped his hands behind his back and strode toward the old library.
The late autumn sunlight spilled across the path, and his footsteps fell without a sound.

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