Yan University. The guesthouse.
This was the very room Professor Wiles had stayed in when he came to Yan University to give a lecture years ago.
Li Dong had rushed all the way here.
Only after pushing the door open did he realize how big of a deal this was.
Principal Gong, Tian Gang, and Liu Ruochuan were there, of course.
Although he had never spoken to Principal Gong one-on-one, who didn’t recognize the university principal?
And then there was Professor Guan An.
Even though Li Dong hadn’t attended many classes last semester, he had still gone to Guan An’s course on the theory of functions of several complex variables a few times.
From Hartogs’s extension theorem to the strong openness conjecture, just getting through that class would have tied even Li Dong’s brain in knots.
After all, Guan An was the leading figure in several complex variables at Yan University. He had just won the Chen Shengshen Mathematics Prize the year before last and was the undisputed number one in the field within the country.
Then, he saw two foreigners sitting on the sofa.
The older of the two was thin and frail.
Who in the world of mathematics didn’t know him?
Andrew Wiles, the man who conquered Fermat’s Last Theorem.
Next to the old gentleman sat another foreigner, a man in his forties, whom Li Dong truly didn’t recognize.
He took a deep breath and began greeting them one by one, in order of seniority.
"Principal Gong, Teacher Tian, Teacher Liu, Teacher Guan."
Then he turned to Wiles.
"Professor Wiles, it’s an honor to meet you."
Finally, facing the foreigner he didn’t know, Li Dong forced himself to say something.
"...Hello... Professor?"
’Since I don’t know him, calling him ’Professor’ can’t be wrong.’
Just then, Tian Gang spoke up.
"You punk, why has your phone been unreachable?"
Li Dong quickly explained.
"Teacher Tian, I’ve been at the School of Chemistry for the past few days helping with data inversion for the SX-STM."
"You can’t bring phones into the UHV chamber area, so it’s been off the whole time."
Tian Gang’s expression darkened.
’How did chemistry get involved now?’
’Wasn’t physics enough?’
He opened his mouth, but in the end, forced himself to swallow his words.
’Now isn’t the time to talk about this.’
Tian Gang suppressed his irritation.
"Professor Wiles came here specifically to see you."
Before he had even finished speaking, Wiles was already on his feet.
The old gentleman had never been a man of many words, and he got straight to the point.
"Li Dong, hello."
"I came to find you after reading your paper."
His gaze fell directly on Li Dong’s face.
"Your paper on the criterion for local-global compatibility in GL(n) has laid an exceptionally beautiful foundation for the Langlands Program."
He paused, his voice growing heavier with emphasis.
"I personally believe the value of this paper is no less than my proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem."
The room fell silent in an instant.
At that moment, Li Dong understood.
Wiles was one of the peer reviewers for his paper.
He quickly waved his hands in dismissal.
"Professor Wiles, you’re too kind. What little I’ve done can’t possibly compare to your work..."
"Don’t be modest."
Wiles cut him off directly.
"In academic matters, things are as they are. There is no such thing as seniority."
His voice wasn’t loud, but his words were spoken with great earnestness.
"In the Langlands Program, you have simply gone further than I have."
"That is not open to debate."
Everyone in the room was stunned.
What was Wiles’s standing in the Langlands Program?
To put it simply, in 1995, Wiles proved the modularity theorem for semistable elliptic curves, which in turn allowed him to conquer Fermat’s Last Theorem.
And the modularity theorem, in essence, is a concrete realization of the Langlands functoriality conjecture between GL(1) and GL(2).
In other words, Wiles himself was the first person to move a truly massive piece of the Langlands Program from the ’conjecture’ column to the ’theorem’ column.
A man like that.
Was telling an undergraduate student from Huaxia... ’You have gone further than I have?’
If word of this got out, the mathematics world would probably be shaken to its core.
Li Dong himself was stunned for a moment, then he quickly said,
"Professor Wiles, your contributions to the Langlands Program are indelible."
"If you hadn’t tackled that piece on modularity back then, any subsequent generalization would have been impossible to even discuss."
"In my paper’s references, your ’Modular elliptic curves and Fermat’s Last Theorem’ is listed as the second entry."
"Besides, I didn’t write this paper alone. Professor Penrose and my teacher, Yang Shengguo..."
"I’ve already spoken with Penrose."
Wiles cut him off once again.
"The main contribution to this paper was you."
"You don’t need to be modest anymore."
"I don’t like modesty. If you have the ability, you have the ability."
Li Dong was taken aback.
’You don’t like modesty? Why didn’t you say so sooner?’
He quickly changed his tune.
"Professor Wiles, I’m not being modest, I’m just telling the truth."
"However, you were right about one thing..."
Li Dong said with an amiable smile.
"I did indeed lay that foundation for the Langlands Program."
Wiles wasn’t surprised. He simply nodded.
That gesture made Li Dong’s heart skip a beat.
’Damn, that boast fell flat.’
Wiles already thought that was the case.
So he wasn’t surprised by Li Dong’s statement at all; he just thought it was a matter of course.
The old gentleman spoke slowly.
"The conjecture you put forth at the very end of your paper..."
He paused for a moment, as if searching for the right word.
"...allowed me to see a... faint, blurry shadow of a grand unification of the Langlands Program."
The instant those words were spoken, Tian Gang whipped his head around to glance at Liu Ruochuan.
His eyes were full of question marks: ’What conjecture??’
Liu Ruochuan was just as baffled.
He shook his head, as if to say, ’I have no idea.’
Then Liu Ruochuan suddenly remembered something Li Dong had said on their way to the cafeteria.
"Teacher, I’m writing the next one."
’No way, was *this* what the kid meant by "the next one"??’

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