By the third night.
The wastebasket was already overflowing with crumpled stationery.
Li Jianming leaned back in his chair, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. The ashtray before him was stuffed with cigarette butts.
He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a small metal box, and opened it. Inside was a bank passbook.
It was his life’s savings.
He opened the passbook and stared at the numbers inside.
The plane ticket to the United States was expensive, and the living costs there would be high too.
He calculated silently in his head.
’If this money isn’t enough, I can still go to the university president and apply for early medical retirement, take the pension, and give up my university-provided housing.’
As long as he could be free to travel, unrestricted by foreign affairs regulations for going abroad, he was willing to bet everything on this one last gamble.
He had even planned it out: once he got to Princeton, he would camp out at the entrance of the Advanced Research Institute. If he couldn’t see Pierre on the first day, he would wait a day. He would see him eventually.
For the future of that kid, Chen Zhuo, it wouldn’t be shameful for him, a teacher, to sell everything he owned, cross the ocean, and beg if he had to.
「The fourth day.」
Morning sunlight streamed through the window and into the office.
Li Jianming was asleep, slumped over his desk, still clutching the red passbook in his hand.
"BANG!"
A loud crash.
The wooden office door was thrown open from the outside, slamming against the wall and bouncing back slightly.
Li Jianming jerked awake, and the passbook in his hand fell onto the desk.
He looked up.
Vice Director Ding from the School of Mathematics stood in the doorway, his face red and his breathing ragged. He was tightly clutching a copy of today’s *Mathematics Herald*.
"Old Ding? What are you doing?"
Li Jianming stood up, frowning.
Vice Director Ding rushed to the desk in a few long strides, planted his hands on its surface, and stared intently at Li Jianming.
"Old Li, you told me a few days ago that the Shanghai seminar was a complete mess and you threw the invitation away?"
Li Jianming froze for a moment.
"I did. What about it?"
"You fool!"
Vice Director Ding slammed his hand on the desk, making the teacup on it rattle.
"Do you have any idea what those sponsors did? That bunch of nouveau riche real estate developers, trying to build hype for their new tech park, threw down hundreds of thousands in US Dollars for an appearance fee and managed to get someone from Princeton!"
Li Jianming’s mind was still foggy; he hadn’t processed it yet.
"What’s wrong with inviting someone from Princeton? They’ve got money to burn..."
"They invited Pierre!"
Vice Director Ding’s voice cracked and echoed through the office.
"Pierre! The Fields Medal winner! The Pierre from the Advanced Research Institute!"
He slapped the newspaper down in front of Li Jianming.
"Those madmen! This is like kidnapping the Pope of Rome and dragging him to a village market! Everyone in pure mathematics in the whole country is scrambling for tickets. People from Yanda and Zhendan have chartered buses to Shanghai. Scalpers are selling tickets for twenty thousand yuan apiece, and even the young teachers in our own school who just want to go for the experience can’t get their hands on one!"
The more Vice Director Ding spoke, the more agitated he became. He reached out and grabbed Li Jianming’s arm.
"Where’s your gold VIP invitation? That one gets you straight into the inner hall, front-row seats! Find it, quickly!"
Li Jianming stood behind the desk.
There was nothing but a ringing in his ears.
Pierre.
Shanghai.
The two words collided in his mind, setting off a clap of thunder.
The mathematical tyrant he had spent three whole days trying to reach—wasting a basketful of stationery, even contemplating selling his house and taking medical retirement just to cross an ocean and beg for a chance to meet him—had been brought to a place only a few hours away from Huizhou by slow train, all because some real estate capitalists threw a few checks at him.
It was a cosmic joke of the most absurd and yet most fortunate kind.
Li Jianming’s breathing quickened. His eyes were instantly shot with blood.
"Old Li? Say something! Where’s the invitation?"
Vice Director Ding grew a little frightened as he looked at Li Jianming’s vacant stare.
Li Jianming violently shoved Vice Director Ding’s hand away.
He rounded the large desk and lunged for the space to its lower right.
That was where the wastebasket sat.
Because he had given strict orders not to let the cleaning lady in, the wastebasket hadn’t been emptied for three whole days.
Before Vice Director Ding’s horrified eyes, Professor Li Jianming—a man who was always so proper, his top button always fastened, the very picture of decorum—dropped heavily to his knees.
He plunged both hands directly into the garbage-filled plastic bin.
"Old Li! Are you insane?!"
Startled, Vice Director Ding took a step back.
Li Jianming couldn’t hear a word he was saying.
He frantically dug through the contents, flinging things out.
Crumpled stationery was tossed onto the floor, ash-covered wads of paper rolled into the corners, and a few dried tea stems stuck to the back of his hands.
He was past caring about any of it.
His hands rummaged desperately through the layer of miscellaneous junk at the very bottom.
His fingers touched a hard edge.
Li Jianming’s movements froze.
He held his breath, his five fingers slowly closing around the piece of cardstock.
Carefully, as if excavating a priceless treasure, he pulled the crumpled object out from beneath the thick layer of ash and wastepaper.
It was a dark red piece of cardstock, its border decorated with a fine, gold-foil pattern.
Because he had crumpled it forcefully, the card was covered in deep creases, and the gold powder was flaking off, leaving it mottled and ruined.
Li Jianming knelt on the floor, cupping the filthy invitation in his two hands.
He lowered his head, and his shoulders began to shake violently.
A hoarse sound, like the drawing of a bellows, escaped his throat.
He laughed.
The laughter grew louder, and tears streamed from the corners of his eyes, splashing onto the dark red card and smudging a bit of dust.
Vice Director Ding stood to the side, staring at his old friend—hands filthy, laughing and crying at once—his mouth agape, utterly speechless.
Li Jianming slowly got to his feet.
He didn’t bother with the dust on his clothes, nor did he wipe the tears from his face.
He walked to his desk and placed the crumpled invitation on the smooth wooden surface.
He extended his hands and used the heels of his palms to press down on the cardstock, forcefully, bit by bit, smoothing out the creases.
Once.
Twice.
As the card flattened, the frenzy and excitement on Li Jianming’s face slowly receded.
In its place was an extremely profound calm.
He opened the invitation and looked at the name written in black French script inside.
He wouldn’t be going to Shanghai like a devout pilgrim.
He was going to be an academic fraud.
Chen Zhuo’s half-finished, truncated derivation was the bait in his hands.
He was going to slap this bait right in the face of that tyrant who found the world so utterly boring because he was too far ahead of it.
As long as Pierre understood the truncation technique, as long as that old madman couldn’t resist opening his mouth to correct it, to show off the theoretical foundation in his mind...
...he, Li Jianming, would extract every last character of that core modern algebraic geometry framework.
And then, he would bring it all back to Huizhou.
Li Jianming pulled open the center drawer.
He took out a blank envelope, one without the university letterhead.
From the stack of incomplete manuscripts he had recopied—stripping them of all background information—he pulled out the two most crucial pages.
He folded them, placed them in the envelope, and sealed it.
He unbuttoned his gray knit vest, slid the envelope neatly into the inner pocket over his heart, and patted it flat.
He looked up at Vice Director Ding, who was still standing there in a daze.
"Old Ding."
Li Jianming’s voice had returned to its usual steady tone, but it now carried an unquestionable resolve.
"Ah... huh? What is it?"
"Inform the school for me. My teaching assistant can cover my classes for the next two days."
Li Jianming walked to the coat rack, took down his old trench coat, and put it on.
"Find someone to help me buy a ticket for the earliest train to Shanghai today."
Li Jianming fastened the buttons of his trench coat one by one.
"Soft sleeper, hard seat, it doesn’t matter. If those are sold out, a standing ticket will do."
Vice Director Ding looked at him.
"You... You’re really going to Shanghai?"
"Yes."
Li Jianming walked to the door, gripped the handle, and glanced back at Old Ding.
He pulled the door open, and a gust of wind from the hallway poured in.
Li Jianming strode out without a backward glance, his leather shoes making steady, forceful sounds on the floor.

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