Yang Shengguo walked out of his office.
He had returned to his hometown of Jiangcheng and had been a math teacher at Seventh Middle School, an ordinary public school, for over a decade.
But some habits die hard.
Like subscribing to the four top mathematics journals.
He started subscribing back in his graduate school days and had kept it up ever since.
The pace of development in cutting-edge mathematics was far beyond imagination, and he had been out of academia for over a decade.
But he still insisted on subscribing.
It was like a retired veteran polishing his old, worn-out uniform on Army Day every year.
Not to wear it.
But to remember that he was once a soldier.
Yang Shengguo took the journal from the old security guard.
"Thanks, Old Zhao."
He walked slowly back to his office, journal in hand.
As he reached the turn in the staircase, he casually flipped open to the table of contents.
Then, he stopped in his tracks.
The title of the third paper in the table of contents was...
"A Complete Proof of Montgomery’s Conjecture on Association for the Interval |α|∈[0, 4]"
Author: Li Dong.
Yang Shengguo’s hand froze in mid-air.
He stared at the name for a long time.
He looked out the window at the sky and suddenly smiled.
"Attaboy."
Similar things were happening all over the world.
A name began to slowly spread throughout the mathematics community.
Li Dong.
The man who had, in one fell swoop, pushed the old boundary of Montgomery’s Conjecture on Association from |α|<1 to |α|∈[0,4].
A nineteen-year-old from Huaxia.
Capital University, School of Mathematical Sciences.
In Jiang Yubai’s office, the latest issue of *Annals of Mathematics* lay open on his desk.
He had actually already seen the paper on the arXiv preprint server.
At the time, he simply found the young man’s line of thought interesting, and it seemed to vaguely echo his own work on GL2 automorphic representations.
But now that it was formally published, he reread it and found that the more he looked, the more he realized how remarkable Li Dong’s paper was. It was a perfect match for his own research direction.
This was especially true of the paper’s method for handling the pair correlation function of zeros in the interval |α|>1.
That technique—using prime power contributions for layered separation, then using a Fourier optimization framework to control the remainder term—if it could be migrated into the framework of automorphic L-functions from the Langlands Program...
Jiang Yubai was lost in thought for a long time.
Then he picked up the phone and called Liu Ruochuan.
The call was answered.
"Old Jiang, what’s up? I have a meeting soon."
Liu Ruochuan asked from the other end of the line.
Jiang Yubai didn’t beat around the bush and got straight to the point.
"I’d like to talk to Li Dong. Do you think you could arrange it?"
There was a few seconds of silence on the other end.
"He’s not at Yan University right now; he’s gone to Zhejiang University. I’ll ask him when he gets back."
In truth, Liu Ruochuan could have agreed right away.
Although Li Dong was officially part of Yuanpei College, the School of Mathematics had always been the one handling his academic resources for mathematics.
Arranging an academic exchange was, for him, a trivial matter that required only a word.
But he didn’t agree immediately.
The reason was simple.
Jiang Yubai was a somewhat controversial figure in their circle.
He didn’t know if the rumors were true or false, and after so many years, no one brought up that old incident anymore.
But Liu Ruochuan was the protective type.
He didn’t want Li Dong to be exposed to anything that might have a negative impact during this crucial stage of his growth, not even a remote possibility.
Jiang Yubai could hear the reservation in Liu Ruochuan’s voice, but he didn’t press the matter.
"Alright, I’ll wait for your news then."
He hung up the phone.
Jiang Yubai took off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
He was almost sixty.
Some things he couldn’t let go of when he was young, he now saw with a sense of detachment.
Meanwhile, Li Dong and Sun Xiang were in a study room, revising the paper they were about to submit to *Molecular Plant*.
The core framework of the paper was already in place; all that remained were some formatting adjustments and bibliographic typesetting.
This kind of finishing work usually went faster with two people.
But Sun Xiang insisted on not letting Li Dong touch the keyboard.
"Don’t touch it! I just got the logic for this Discussion section straightened out. I’m afraid you’ll mess it up if you touch it."
"Just stand there and watch."
Sun Xiang said as he typed away on the keyboard.
He couldn’t explain why, but as long as Li Dong was nearby, his own train of thought became unbelievably clear.
The typesetting logic and data presentation methods that would normally take him half a day to puzzle over were now perfectly clear in his mind.
It was like he was using a cheat code.
Li Dong didn’t mind.
It saved him the trouble anyway.
[University Research in Progress]: @Gregor John Mendel, Your Excellency Mendel, this is a study my nephew conducted regarding the issue of being unable to reproduce the 3:1 segregation ratio in your Alpine Willow Chrysanthemum cross-breeding experiments. Please take a look.
He then sent the manuscript for the paper on the HpPAR Gene to the group, completely unedited.
It sent without any issues.
This showed that Li Dong had completely mastered every part of the paper’s core content: from the positional cloning of the HpPAR Gene, to the restoration of sexual reproduction after a CRISPR knockout, and finally to the perfect 3:1 segregation ratio displayed in the self-pollinated offspring of the knockout strain.
After all, he and Sun Xiang had worked on this project together from start to finish.
Soon, the file showed as "received."
But Mendel didn’t say anything.
Li Dong felt he already understood Mendel quite well.
’This titan’s habit is to verify everything himself first, and only reply after he’s done.’
After all, the gene-editing technology involved in the paper would be completely unheard of for Mendel.
Fortunately, after his group permissions were upgraded, the "Cognitive Adaptive Compilation System" in the group would automatically translate these modern concepts into a framework Mendel could understand.
Moreover, Li Dong had specifically added some methods to the paper that would allow the core conclusions to be replicated even under nineteenth-century experimental conditions.
For example, by using large-scale statistical analysis of trait ratios in cross-bred offspring, observing pollen morphology, and using grafting experiments to indirectly verify the existence of parthenogenesis.
Although these methods were far less precise than CRISPR, the logical chain was complete, enough for a genius like Mendel to see the key insights.
Thinking of this, Li Dong was about to lock his screen.
But just then...
A red envelope popped up directly on his screen.
[Gregor John Mendel has sent an exclusive red envelope]
Li Dong was stunned.
’One minute?’
’Wait, titan, isn’t your whole persona supposed to be that of a research maniac who’s so rigorous it’s almost pathological, someone who has to personally verify everything?’
’Shouldn’t you be planting a few thousand willow chrysanthemums before sending me a red envelope?’
’What’s with you being so fast sometimes and so slow other times?’
Grumbling was one thing, but a red envelope still had to be claimed.
[You have claimed Gregor John Mendel’s gift.]
[Description: In the garden of the Brno Monastery, a man spent ten years counting the color and shape of every single seed on twenty-eight thousand pea plants.]
[The world mocked him as a pea-planting priest; no one believed that the code for life’s continuation was hidden within a single seed.]
[His paper gathered dust in a corner of the library for thirty-four years, only to be rediscovered sixteen years after his death.]
[But the two laws he left behind became the cornerstone of all modern genetics.]
[His only regret was that patch of stubborn Alpine Willow Chrysanthemums.]
[With their silence, they rejected all his efforts, causing him to fall into deep self-doubt in the final years of his life.]
[Now... you have solved this mystery for him.]
[It wasn’t that his laws were wrong.]
[It was that the flower had chosen a different path from the very beginning.]
Immediately after, a group announcement appeared.
[Group member "Gregor John Mendel’s" lifelong regret has been resolved.]
[In a parallel timeline, the developmental trajectory of life sciences in Universe No. 1822 has fundamentally deviated...]
[Congratulations, you have obtained a special item: Life Science Origin Fragment (1/3)]
[Item Description: This is an origin crystal that condenses the mysteries of life from an entire era.]
[Throughout the long ages, humanity has never stopped asking about its own origins: Where do we come from? Why is life passed down this way? This fragment seals within it that first answer.]
[Current Effect (Single Fragment): Even as just one fragment, it grants you the intuition to perceive the underlying logic of life.]
[When studying any knowledge related to genetics, molecular biology, or genetic engineering, you will instinctively recognize hidden genetic laws and expression patterns.]
[Complete Effect: If you collect all three Origin Fragments (Current Progress: 2/3), you will be able to fully replicate an entire branch of a world-changing technology tree!]
HISS—
Li Dong gasped, a mouthful of Gregor Mendel.
Current Progress: 2/3.
The last one he got was the Third Industrial Revolution Origin Fragment.
This time, it was the Life Science Origin Fragment.
Fragments from two completely different fields were actually added to the same total progress bar!
’So these fragments aren’t collected separately by field...’
Li Dong stared at the [2/3], his 0.4 Logic attribute kicking into overdrive.
’The Third Industrial Revolution... Life Science... The directions of these two tech trees are completely different, but the fragments share the same progress pool.’
’Does that mean... as long as I get one more Origin Fragment, regardless of its field, the total progress will reach 3/3?’
’And then I can choose one of these tech trees to fully replicate?’
The speculation made Li Dong’s scalp tingle.
’These aren’t fragments, are they? This is clearly a tech tree selector for human civilization!’
Just as he was immersed in this wild vision of the future...
"Hey!"
"Alright, it’s done. Take a look."
Sun Xiang turned the laptop screen toward Li Dong.

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