After dinner, Li Dong and Wang Hao strolled leisurely back to their dorm.
Wang Hao didn’t stop talking the entire way.
"Brother Dong, after chatting a bit with Gu God today, I realized there was so much about mathematical modeling that I never truly understood."
"You know? I was stuck on the duality modeling for nonlinear constraints. No matter how I tried to transform it, it just felt wrong."
"With just three sentences, Gu God straightened out a problem I’d been wrestling with for three days."
"It just clicked for me instantly."
"It just clicked, you know what I mean?"
Li Dong grunted in acknowledgment.
Wang Hao continued.
"Brother Dong, you should learn a thing or two from Gu God."
Li Dong finally looked up.
"Learn what from him?"
"How to explain problems," Wang Hao said, full of righteous indignation. "Look at Gu God, he’s so approachable."
"When he explains a problem, he breaks it all down for you—the cause and effect, why you have to do it this way, why you can’t do it that way."
"And you?"
"When you explain a problem, guess how I feel afterward?"
Li Dong: "How do you feel?"
Wang Hao said, heartbroken.
"It makes me feel like my mom brought me into this world for nothing."
Li Dong rolled his eyes.
"My explanations aren’t approachable?"
"Go ask Professor Penrose later."
"Ask him if my explanation wasn’t perfectly clear and easy to understand."
Wang Hao stared at him, speechless.
"Brother Dong, do you think what’s ’easy to understand’ for Professor Penrose is the same as what’s ’easy to understand’ for us?"
Li Dong was caught off guard by the question.
’Hmm... He’s got a point.’
’No, I can’t back down.’
"Whatever. Professor Penrose said my explanation was very clear."
"No matter how amazing Gu Ming is, can he get a tenured honorary professor from Princeton to nod in agreement?"
Wang Hao thought about it and found he had no rebuttal.
The two of them bickered like this all the way back to Room 404.
Li Dong shrugged off his jacket, sat down on the lower bunk, and started scrolling through his phone.
He once again read through those chat logs between Madam Curie and Mendeleev.
The perspectives were certainly unconventional.
But they weren’t particularly deep.
They were just discussing whether elements were fundamentally immutable.
’Logically, it shouldn’t have given me that flash of inspiration.’
Li Dong rubbed the bridge of his nose.
’Am I just overthinking this?’
’Or is my knowledge of chemistry insufficient, creating a gap in my understanding?’
Li Dong sighed softly.
To connect these dots, he would at least have to systematically go through Professor Zhang Lufang’s "Advanced Inorganic Chemistry" course.
’Forget it.’
’I’ll wait until the semester starts and go ask Professor Zhang Lufang for guidance.’
’For this winter break, I’ll focus on wrapping up my math project first.’
He would put the chemistry thread aside for now.
Inspiration was something you couldn’t force.
The more you chased it, the farther it ran. It was better to let it go; maybe one day it would come knocking on its own.
Having made his decision, he didn’t continue working on the math project either.
He rolled over and fell asleep not long after.
The next morning, Li Dong was awakened by the sound of running water in the bathroom.
Wang Hao was already up, fixing his hair in front of the mirror.
Seeing Li Dong sit up, he said.
"Brother Dong, want me to get you some food?"
Li Dong shook his head.
"No need. I have to go over my project with Professor Penrose and Teacher Yang in a bit."
Wang Hao nodded.
He was pretty much immune to the way every other word out of Li Dong’s mouth was about "going over my project with Professor Penrose."
A year ago, a statement like that would have made him envious for the whole day. Now, he just grunted in response.
At the exit of Beijing High-speed Rail Station, Gao Yuanlin walked out with quick steps.
He had just finished a two-day Xiangshan Science Conference.
He hailed a taxi, but instead of going home, he headed straight for Zhou Qifeng’s house.
The car stopped at the entrance to the residential community.
Gao Yuanlin rang the doorbell. Zhou Qifeng’s youngest daughter answered the door.
The young woman was a junior in college and was currently preparing to study abroad.
She was visibly surprised to see Gao Yuanlin standing at the door.
"Uncle Gao?"
"What are you doing here?"
Gao Yuanlin smiled, his tone gentle.
"Is your dad home?"
"Yes, yes, he is." The young woman quickly turned and shouted into the house.
"Dad, Uncle Gao is here!"
The study door opened.
Zhou Qifeng walked out and said to Gao Yuanlin.
"Old Gao, come into the study. Let’s talk."
Gao Yuanlin nodded and followed Zhou Qifeng into the study.
The moment the door closed,
Gao Yuanlin skipped the pleasantries and pulled a chair directly opposite Zhou Qifeng.
"What did he tell you?"
Zhou Qifeng: ...
"Is he really building a bridge?"
Zhou Qifeng was silent for two seconds, then nodded.
He then recounted what Li Dong had said that day to Gao Yuanlin.
"Old Gao, we’ve known each other for years, so I’ll be straight with you. I work on quantum fields, which is a far cry from his stuff."
"To be honest, I didn’t fully understand everything he talked about that day."
Gao Yuanlin grunted, not the least bit surprised.
The backbone of Li Dong’s work was Fujikawa’s method—using the path integral measure to extract the geometric origin of the chiral anomaly.
Zhou Qifeng was familiar with this part; path integrals were his bread and butter.
But what Li Dong said next was a direct leap into geometric deep learning.
From message passing neural networks on molecular graphs to discrete lattices in condensed matter... (some details omitted from the original text).
Zhou Qifeng was familiar with each of these jumps when taken individually.
But connecting them all together...
Zhou Qifeng had spent his entire life working on gauge fields and path integral quantization. The world he saw through his eyes was inherently continuous, symmetrical, and differentiable.
To ask him to suddenly shift his perspective to "how discrete topological quantities leave their mark on continuous geometric fields" and treat that as the main thread connecting molecules, condensed matter, and lattice points...
He couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t a lack of technical skill, but that the blade of his intuition had never been sharpened in that direction.
Not to mention Li Dong, with his usual habit of skipping steps, had omitted at least three or four transitional steps in between.
It was perfectly normal that he didn’t understand parts of it.
Gao Yuanlin was silent for a few seconds, then sighed.
"Old Zhou."
"If that kid had started with physics instead of math..."
"With his talent, his name would have been in the top physics journals long ago."
Zhou Qifeng didn’t object, just nodded slowly.
"So what do we do now?"
"He’s already made a name for himself in math. We can’t just force him to switch over, can we?"
But Gao Yuanlin smiled.
"Not right now."
Zhou Qifeng paused for a moment, then understood.
With Li Dong’s physical intuition, he was bound to get into physics one day, and that day wouldn’t be too far off.
So it didn’t matter which department he was in. No matter how brilliant you are at math, it’s just a tool. In the end, it still serves physics.
But Gao Yuanlin had his own little scheme.
Li Dong was Tian Gang’s student—at least, that’s what Tian Gang claimed.
’I can’t win a tug-of-war with him!’
However, if Li Dong himself wanted to pursue physics, and Tian Gang dared to stand in his way, Gao Yuanlin was no pushover either.
’And besides, I have a colleague named Yang!’

Comments

Loading...