For the average high school student, academic papers were a bit of a mystery.
Whenever they overheard college students chatting, they’d always hear things like:
"Ugh, my paper got rejected again..."
"My paper’s plagiarism check came back at 0%..."
Dude, getting 0% on a plagiarism check is a true feat.
Li Dong was no exception; he also wanted to know what the big deal with academic papers was.
Old Yang opened a Chinese academic database, searched a few keywords, and casually clicked on several domestic graduation theses.
He quickly skimmed through them, but he seemed unsatisfied with all of them.
"Sigh..."
"College students these days... The formatting on these papers is a mess, the abstracts read like prose, and the bibliography citations aren’t rigorous at all."
Old Yang fell silent for a moment, a hint of hesitation in his eyes.
Finally, he closed the database page and typed a URL into the browser: projecteuclid.org/journals/duke-mathematical-journal.
As Li Dong watched in anticipation, the page began to load...
This site can’t be reached. (Dear readers, please don’t flame me for this. The URL is like GitHub; sometimes you really can’t access it directly.)
Li Dong: ...
Old Yang: ...
After a bit of tinkering, the page displayed properly.
It was a page written entirely in English.
Li Dong was completely unfamiliar with this website.
The banner at the top read "Duke Mathematical Journal."
The Duke Mathematical Journal.
As someone who had yet to set foot in the world of academia, Li Dong had no idea that this ugly, English-language webpage belonged to a god-tier journal, ranked in the first tier just below the big four in mathematics.
For a professor in the math department of any top university in the country, publishing a single article in the *Duke Mathematical Journal* was something to be proud of.
Old Yang clicked on a back issue and found an article in the table of contents.
The title was "On Local-Global Compatibility for Automorphic Representations of GL2 in the Case of Ramification Index ≤ 2."
"...in the case of...not exceeding 2..."
Li Dong muttered to himself. There were some technical terms he didn’t recognize.
Old Yang overheard him and clarified with a smile.
"It means, ’On the local-global compatibility for GL2 automorphic representations in the case where the ramification index does not exceed 2.’"
However, he didn’t explain what the paper was actually about.
After all, unless one was a master’s student—no, even a PhD—specializing in number theory and automorphic forms, they likely wouldn’t have any reason to explore this field of research.
Li Dong nodded and then looked at the authors’ byline.
Jiang Yubai1 Zhou Shenzhi2
1. School of Mathematical Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Capital City 100875.
2. School of Mathematical Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Capital City 100875.
A flicker of pain and resentment crossed Old Yang’s eyes. His name should have been up there.
But Li Dong didn’t notice. He was already captivated by the dense blocks of English text and mathematical formulas on the screen.
Li Dong had already assessed his own math skills. He figured he was on par with the top students in an undergraduate math program at a leading university. However, since he was mostly self-taught, his breadth of knowledge was probably still lacking in comparison.
Thus, he could only barely grasp some of the fundamental logic behind Algebraic Geometry and homological algebra. But as for the deeper proofs at the core of the Langlands Program and p-adic Hodge theory, it was all Greek to him.
Old Yang, for his part, had no idea this kid was already trying to tackle the Langlands Program. If he had known, he would have smacked Li Dong across the head.
’Are you getting ahead of yourself? If you can understand this stuff, what does that make my 700-plus days and nights of effort? I was called a genius once too, you know!’
So he simply began to explain the conventions of international academic papers to Li Dong in detail.
"Look here, the ’Abstract’ is the summary. It’s not a place for fluff. You have to use the most concise language possible to state what methods you used to solve what problem under which boundary conditions..."
"And the citations here, the format has to be perfect, not off by a single iota..."
Li Dong’s Basic Attributes were high, so he was a fast learner.
He not only memorized all the tedious formatting requirements, fonts, and font sizes, but he also gained a deep, logical understanding of why such rules were in place.
Because academia requires a rigorous lineage and traceable boundaries.
A class period flew by.
Jiang Yang returned to the office, water bottle in hand and a gloomy look on his face.
Old Yang finally stopped and patted Li Dong on the shoulder.
"Alright, that’s all for this lesson. Just commit the formatting to memory. You’ll need it later. Go on and get ready for your next two classes."
Li Dong nodded gratefully and left the office.
The next two classes were Chinese and English.
Li Dong sat at his desk. With all his core attributes raised to 0.2, he was like a bucket whose shortest staves had all been mended; his brain was operating at an unprecedented level of efficiency.
The Chinese teacher stood at the podium, analyzing the functional shifts of words in classical Chinese, while the English teacher explained the inverted structures of long, complex sentences.
Before, Li Dong had found all of this mind-numbingly dull and had struggled to understand the underlying principles.
That was because with subjects in the humanities, applying pure mathematical logic often led to the wrong answer; you had to empathize with the intent of the person who created the question.
But things were different now.
A 0.2 in Memory allowed him to retain every fixed expression and classical poem, while a 0.2 in Logic helped him parse grammatical structures into their subjects, verbs, and objects.
He suddenly discovered that understanding these topics was infinitely easier than it used to be.
Time trickled by in this state of highly efficient learning.
「Five minutes to three in the afternoon.」
Inside the faculty office, Zheng Hua, Old Yang, and Li Dong were crowded tightly around Zheng Hua’s desk computer.
The results for the Huaxuan Cup semi-finals were about to be announced.
As the clock struck 15:00, Zheng Hua pressed F5 to refresh the page.
"List of Advancing Contestants for the 16th Huaxuan Cup Semi-finals (Southwest Division)."
The three of them leaned in for a closer look and froze.
Typically, for commercial competitions like this, the results page would directly display a real-time ranking with scores to attract attention and generate buzz.
But this time was strange. The semi-finals page didn’t show any specific scores, only a list of the contestants who were moving on.
In the first row of the list, in the very first spot, was:
[Li Dong (Jiangcheng Seventh Middle School)]
The second name immediately following was: [Qiao Fan (Rongcheng Seventh Middle School)]
In the sixth position was: [Lin Xiao (Jiangcheng Tianli College)]
Meanwhile, Zhao Ziv, that arrogant kid from Sixth Middle School, was ranked somewhere after the top ten.
Although, at the very bottom of the list on the official website, a line was written in tiny font: "This list is not ranked and is sorted according to principles such as the alphabetical order of Pinyin initials."
But anyone with eyes could see through that. If both names started with the Pinyin initial "L," why was Li Dong first and Lin Xiao sixth?
Besides, if it wasn’t ranked, why not just list all the names in horizontal rows? Why arrange them in a vertical column from top to bottom?
This was clearly a de facto ranking created by the organizers.
Li Dong was, for all intents and purposes, first place!
"Yes! Yes! Fantastic!"
Zheng Hua dropped all pretense, his face flushed with excitement.
"You kid, you’ve really brought honor to our Seventh Middle School!"
Li Dong’s heart was also pounding with excitement, and he chimed in agreement.
"Yes, yes, yes! Twenty thousand yuan! That twenty thousand is in the bag!"
The air in the office fell silent.
Then, a roar of hearty laughter erupted.
Old Yang, standing off to the side, appeared much calmer.
He was all too familiar with Li Dong’s true capabilities.
With the foundation in physics and math that Li Dong was currently displaying, forget a high school competition—Old Yang even felt that if you threw the kid into the physics department at his own alma mater, Capital University, his skills would place him firmly in the upper-middle tier!
Zheng Hua immediately bolted out the office door to tell Principal Wang the good news, not even thinking to use the landline phone on his desk.
Old Yang shook his head with a helpless smile. He turned, intending to offer Li Dong some encouragement like, "Keep up the good work and maintain this momentum for the finals."
But when he turned around, all he saw was a Li Dong with dollar signs for eyes, giggling foolishly to himself, "Hehehe."
Old Yang let out a long sigh.
"This kid... he’s a lost cause."

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