The ICCM poster presentation area.
Qin Fei and a few of his classmates stood at their presentation booth, beads of sweat forming on their foreheads.
Standing before them was an elderly, white-haired professor whose badge identified him as a specially invited expert from Fudan University.
The old professor pointed at their poster—"A Study on the Efficient Numerical Calculation of Non-trivial Zeros of Dirichlet L-functions under Quadratic Characters"—and frowned.
"You’ve chosen a very interesting direction for this project, attempting to generalize traditional computation methods to the domain of the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis."
The professor’s tone was mild, but his assessment was incisive.
"However, the underlying algorithmic architecture feels a bit too crude."
"When dealing with the Hardy-Littlewood approximate functional equation, your method for bounding the truncation error is completely outdated—it’s based on a technique from a decade ago."
"Especially when the modulus q of the conductor becomes large, your handling of the asymptotic expansion of the incomplete gamma function is very clumsy..."
"Sigh... The idea is good, but the execution is too crude."
The old professor shook his head, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked to the next booth.
Once the professor was out of earshot, Qin Fei’s classmates started to groan.
"Sigh, I knew this was a bad idea! We never solved the underlying error control. We shouldn’t have come here just to embarrass ourselves!"
"Yeah, we were too pressed for time. We were lucky to get the code to run at all..."
Qin Fei could only manage a wry smile.
Of course it was crude!
Their team’s original project, chosen a year ago, was the same as his graduation thesis topic: multi-threaded parallel optimization for the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function, based on the OS algorithm!
They had spent over half a year refining that code; they could have written it from memory with their eyes closed!
But what happened?
Li Dong published a single paper in a top international journal. By using a non-linear FFT grid expansion and Chebyshev interpolation, he had achieved something akin to a dimensional takedown, reducing the algorithm’s time complexity for finding non-trivial zeros to an absolutely insane degree!
The moment that algorithm was made open-source, it completely pulled the rug out from under Qin Fei’s team!
They had no choice. To ensure they could still present at the ICCM, their advisor had forced them to switch topics at the last minute. They shifted their focus to Dirichlet L-functions—a topic related to the Riemann Hypothesis, but slightly more niche.
How could something thrown together in just a month or two not be crude?
Just as Qin Fei was about to console his teammates, a voice cut in.
"Actually, that professor was right. You definitely took the long way around with the asymptotic expansion of the incomplete gamma function."
"Since your project deals with quadratic characters with a large modulus q, why insist on wrestling with the truncation error of the approximate functional equation?"
The young man’s logic was crystal clear.
"You could simply use the Fast Mellin Transform."
"By constructing a discrete eigenspectrum grid in the frequency domain, you could transform the tedious process of integrating each eigenvalue individually into a single, global fast convolution operation."
"Combine that with the Poisson summation formula to handle the boundary conditions at the tail, and the overall time complexity could be reduced by at least half an order of magnitude. Not only would the computational load be smaller, but the error control would also become incredibly smooth."
Hearing this, it was as if a lightbulb went on for Qin Fei and his teammates.
"Holy shit... he’s right!"
"The Fast Mellin Transform! Move the integration to the frequency domain and use convolution! That way, we don’t have to brute-force that nasty incomplete gamma function!"
The group of third- and fourth-year top students had a sudden epiphany. The feeling was like the clouds parting to reveal the sun, and they were so excited they immediately began thanking the expert who had just been passing by.
"Thank you! Thank you so much!"
Qin Fei was about to add his own thanks and see which passing hotshot had been so kind.
But when he looked up, he froze.
The young man stood there with his hands in his pockets, grinning at him.
"Qin Fei, long time no see."
Li Dong!
The expression on Qin Fei’s face was a sight to behold.
Truth be told, he held a deep admiration for Li Dong. After all, the things this guy had accomplished were far beyond what any normal university student could do.
But it was also because of this guy—because he was just too brilliant—that his own project had been axed.
"Heh... heh..." Qin Fei forced a laugh.
"Li... Li Dong. Long time no see."
Seeing how awkward Qin Fei looked, Li Dong didn’t linger. He just smiled and waved.
"I’ll let you get back to it. I’m heading to the main auditorium."
Once Li Dong’s figure had disappeared down the corridor, Qin Fei’s classmates crowded around him, their faces alight with gossip.
"Brother Fei, you know that hotshot? His grasp of algorithms is insane! I feel like he’s even sharper than our advisor!"
"By the way, what did you call him? Li Dong?"
one classmate asked, the name suddenly clicking.
"It couldn’t be *the* Li Dong from Yan University, could it?"
Qin Fei nodded, his face ashen.
"Yeah. The one and only."
A collective, sharp intake of breath sounded from all around.
"Hiss— Holy shit!"
"A true legend! A living one!"
"Has he even finished his freshman year? He just gave us a couple of pointers off the cuff, and I feel like my intelligence was completely steamrolled..."
Soon, the poster presentation session came to an end, and the formal proceedings of the ICCM began in the main auditorium.
After the opening ceremony and speeches from the leadership, the first major academic presentation of the morning was by Liu Ruochuan, the Dean of the Yan University School of Mathematics.
Liu Ruochuan had been making big waves recently, both at home and abroad.
Everyone in the field knew that, barring any surprises, this young mathematician would officially be granted the title of "Academician" in the upcoming November selection for Huaxia’s two national academies.
Li Dong had found a seat near the front early on and settled in.
Onstage, Liu Ruochuan opened his presentation.
"Esteemed colleagues, good morning."
"The topic of my presentation today is ’p-adic Hodge Theory and the Rigorous Analysis of the Local Geometry of Shimura Varieties.’"
"Over the past few years, our team has been dedicated to resolving the core obstacles within the Langlands Program concerning local-global compatibility."
Liu Ruochuan used a laser pointer to indicate a commutative diagram on the large screen.
"Please, take a look. By introducing Fontaine’s period rings, we successfully constructed a functor from the rigid analytic space to the p-adic Galois representation while studying overconvergent F-isocrystals..."
Liu Ruochuan spoke rather quickly, but his logic was rigorous.
"This means that on the level of local geometry, we can directly capture the microscopic projection of global arithmetic properties..."
The audience erupted in thunderous applause.
Li Dong, sitting in the audience, was utterly captivated.
The thirty-minute presentation concluded quickly.
During the Q&A session that followed, several leading international figures posed some sharp questions about "how to handle the uniformization theorem when boundary conditions fail." Liu Ruochuan handled them all with ease, his answers flawless and impeccable.
Everything had gone exceptionally smoothly.
After the morning session concluded, Liu Ruochuan came down from the stage. After exchanging a few pleasantries with some foreign professors, he made his way over to Li Dong.
"So, what did you think? Could you follow along?" Liu Ruochuan asked, beaming. He was clearly in an excellent mood today.
A soon-to-be academician asking a freshman if he could understand his presentation.
Under normal circumstances, the question would have been a joke.
But Li Dong simply nodded and said.
"It was very enlightening."
Liu Ruochuan clapped him on the shoulder. Then, pointing to a few figures in the front rows who were preparing to leave, he began to introduce the key players to Li Dong.
"See that old man in the gray suit with the curly hair?"
"That’s Professor Peter Sarnak from Princeton. He’s very interested in you, by the way."
"And that one over there is Professor Zhang Yitang. He works on prime gaps; you should know who he is."
"The one next to him, chatting with someone, that’s Tao Zhexuan."
Li Dong looked at them one by one. These were living legends, the kind of people you only see in textbooks and on the covers of top-tier journals.
"Professor, is Professor Penrose from Princeton here?"
Li Dong remembered Sarah knocking on his door the day before and asked casually.
"He’s here. He was sitting in the front row a moment ago. I suppose he’s gone backstage by now."
Liu Ruochuan paused for a moment before adding.
"There’s one more person..."
"Mr. Enrico Bombieri came this time as well."
"He didn’t come to the auditorium this morning, though."
"He’s getting on in years, so his energy is limited."
"But for him to fly all this way... he’s most likely here for you."
Liu Ruochuan said, his tone heavy with meaning.
"Tomorrow’s Q&A session might be more challenging than you think."
"You... should be prepared."

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