Li Dong frowned after getting the call from Li Qin.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want Li Qin to come see him.
But Li Qin was coming over now, of all times?
Li Yang had gone to Huaxuan Technology for technical training with the core supply chain companies, and it would be at least a month or two before he returned.
It wasn’t even the New Year yet, and she was suddenly saying she wanted to come to Kyoto?
’Who’s watching the factory, then?’
This wasn’t like Li Qin at all.
"Mom, is something wrong?"
Li Qin’s chiding laughter came from the other end of the line.
"Nothing’s wrong, I just miss you and want to come see you. What’s the matter? Am I not welcome?"
"Don’t tell me you have a girlfriend now and you’re afraid I’ll disturb your little love nest?"
Li Dong could tell that Li Qin was deliberately changing the subject.
But he didn’t press her.
"Mom, what girlfriend? Of course you’re welcome! I’ll take you on a tour of my school when you get here."
Then he mimicked the way Li Qin used to talk at home.
"Didn’t you always used to say..."
"’If you ever get into Yan University or Shuimu, green smoke will rise from our ancestral graves.’"
"So, did you go and check? Is there any smoke?"
Li Qin burst out laughing on the other end of the line.
Her tone was clearly much more relaxed.
"You little brat, such a smart mouth."
"Alright, alright. I’ll let you know before I come. Don’t be too busy, okay? And take care of yourself."
"I know."
After a few more pleasantries, Li Qin hung up.
Standing at the entrance of the cafeteria, Li Dong stared at his phone, feeling like something was off.
Li Qin had said nothing was wrong, but how could he possibly believe that?
’Oh well, I’ll find out when she gets here.’
Li Dong stood there thinking for another moment.
Then, he dialed another number.
BEEP BEEP...
The call connected quickly.
"Hello?"
Yang Shengguo’s voice came from the other end.
Li Dong got straight to the point.
"Teacher Yang, are you coming or not?"
He had expected Old Yang to hesitate for at least a few seconds.
After all, the last time they spoke, Yang Shengguo had only said he’d think about it, leaving Li Dong unsure how to bring it up again and press him for an answer.
However, to his surprise...
"Coming."
Yang Shengguo answered him with a single word.
"Actually, I wanted to say yes right away when you asked me last time."
"But I had to consider my family."
"I’ve had a good long talk with my wife about it, and she’s very supportive."
Yang Shengguo continued.
"She said she wants to come along too. She wants to take advantage of the New Year holiday to visit her alma mater and bring Ningning to see Shuimu and Yan University, to let the little girl experience the atmosphere of Kyoto’s top institutions."
"Hmm?"
Li Dong’s interest was suddenly piqued.
"Your wife graduated from a school in Kyoto too? Yan University or Shuimu?"
There was a two-second silence on the other end of the line.
Yang Shengguo’s tone suddenly became exasperated.
"In your eyes, are those the only two schools in Kyoto?"
"Hehe, well, it’s mainly because those two are so famous."
Yang Shengguo couldn’t be bothered to argue with him and said directly.
"We’ll probably head over once the winter break starts at my school."
"Great! No problem!" Li Dong immediately puffed out his chest.
"I’ll pick you all up. Don’t worry about a place to stay, I’ll arrange everything."
Yang Shengguo grunted in affirmation.
And hung up.
After hanging up, Li Dong stood in front of the cafeteria and smiled.
He was the type to hold a grudge, but also to remember a kindness.
Back at Seventh Middle School, he was just a slacker who couldn’t even manage a passing grade.
Old Yang had never given up on him. In fact, as their homeroom teacher, Old Yang had never given up on any student in the class.
So, he had always remembered that.
The problem of GL2 to GL(n) was something Li Dong could have tackled on his own.
But he didn’t want to tackle it alone.
Because if this paper were to be published, he hoped to see Yang Shengguo’s name in the author list.
Because Yang Shengguo deserved to be there.
Thinking of this, Li Dong immediately pulled out his phone and opened the Cyan Dragon Study Group chat.
[University Researcher]: @Bernhard Riemann
[University Researcher]: Your Excellency Riemann, last time you mentioned a necessary equivalence between the statistical properties of zero-pair correlations and the local structure of automorphic functions.
[University Researcher]: I’ve recently been trying to apply this line of thought to the GL(n) framework, and I have some questions about the Hodge-Tate weight coupling structure in the case of High Tier ramification indices that I’d like to discuss with you.
After sending the message, Li Dong stared at the screen for half a minute.
Riemann ignored him.
Li Dong: ...
’Fine, you’re a busy man.’
Li Dong was just about to put his phone away.
[Marie Curie]: @Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, you can put that ridiculous "immutable elements" theory of yours to rest! My laboratory just measured the decay constant of Polonium-210, and its half-life is only 138 days! An element spontaneously turned into another element in less than half a year! Isn’t that proof enough?
[Mendeleev]: There’s a problem with your laboratory! Your purification process must not have been thorough enough, you introduced impurities...
Li Dong sighed inwardly as he watched the messages flood the chat.
’Great, here we go again.’
These two big shots had a small argument every three days and a big one every five. It always started with an academic debate and ended in personal attacks.
Last time, Mendeleev said Madam Curie’s lab was "as crude as a vodka cellar," which nearly made Madam Curie so angry that she wanted to shove the radium in her hands right in his face.
Li Dong quickly scrolled up through the chat interface, confirming that Riemann really hadn’t replied to him.
’Better not get involved.’
He decisively shoved his phone into his pocket and turned to walk toward his dorm.
’I’ll fleece these two sheep later. The most important thing right now is to sort out the materials for my research project application.’
Just as Li Dong was looking forward to his mother’s and Teacher Yang’s arrival in Kyoto...
On the other side of the ocean, someone else was embarking on a journey to Kyoto.
「New Jersey, Newark Liberty International Airport.」
The departure hall.
Professor Arthur Penrose was sitting on a chair with an academic journal open on his lap.
Beside him, the blonde, blue-eyed Sarah was looking down at her phone, her brow slightly furrowed.
"Professor."
Sarah finally couldn’t help but speak up.
"Are you sure you don’t need to say anything to Princeton?"
Penrose didn’t look up, merely turning a page of his journal.
"Say what?"
"Shouldn’t you at least report it to the department head?" Sarah’s voice was tinged with worry.
"The university has reporting requirements for faculty members’ overseas academic activities, especially..."
She didn’t finish, but Penrose knew what she wanted to say.
Especially when it involved going to Huaxia.
In recent years, major universities in the United States of America had become increasingly sensitive about exchanges and collaborations between their professors and overseas academic institutions.
Although Princeton had an open academic atmosphere, the administrative oversight grew stricter year by year.
According to university regulations, faculty engaging in off-campus professional activities must inform their department head in advance and truthfully disclose all overseas academic exchanges in their annual report.
If it involved collaboration with foreign institutions, it might even require the approval of the dean.
And now, Penrose was flying to Huaxia in a personal capacity to visit an undergraduate from Yan University, without going through any formal inter-university exchange channels or even notifying his department. Strictly speaking, it was a bit of a violation.
Penrose shot Sarah a glare.
"I’m going to visit a friend. What does that have to do with Princeton?"
"I’m not representing the university to discuss a collaboration, much less participating in some foreign talent program."
"Do I need the department head’s approval for where I travel during my vacation?"
Sarah nodded and said no more.
But she was still worried.
Knowing her professor, once the sixty-something-year-old man met Li Dong, he would most likely get carried away.
What if this "private visit" turned into an "academic collaboration," or even something deeper...
Then the nature of the trip would be completely different.
Then again, Sarah could actually understand Penrose’s feelings.
As his student, she had of course read Li Dong’s paper.
"Proof of Montgomery’s Conjecture on Association in the Interval |α|∈[0, 4]".
After all, her professor was practically possessed by it, muttering its title every single day.
And once she started reading it, she couldn’t stop.
The derivation in that paper, how to describe it...
Sarah had been working in analytic number theory for five years and had read eight hundred, if not a thousand, papers.
Some papers were incisive, with rigorous logic and correct conclusions, but reading them felt like reading... an instruction manual. Correct, but without any sense of beauty.
But Li Dong’s paper was different.
It was both rigorous and elegant.
For example, when dealing with the crucial interval transition for |α| from 1 to 2, he didn’t use any classic truncation strategies. Instead, he constructed a set of dynamically adaptive Fourier weight functions.
This set of weight functions was incredibly simple in form, yet their coupling relationship happened to automatically cancel out the most stubborn higher-order oscillating remainder terms during the process of tightening the error bounds.
It was as if those weight functions hadn’t been artificially designed, but had grown naturally out of the mathematical structure of the zero distribution itself.
It was as beautiful as a painting.
Sarah still remembered how she felt after reading that part of the derivation.
It wasn’t shock...
But a kind of deep emotion that came from mathematics itself.
So she understood why her professor had become so obsessed.
Because Professor Penrose had spent his whole life chasing the footsteps of Riemann, and Li Dong’s paper had shown him that someone could truly think about mathematics in the same way Riemann did.
"Attention please."
The announcement suddenly echoed through the departure hall.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a boarding announcement for United Airlines Flight 89, nonstop service from Newark to Beijing..."
Penrose closed his journal and stood up.
"Let’s go."
Sarah followed her professor toward the boarding gate.

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