The other professors felt much the same.
As for Li Dong,
He started by rubbing his ears.
A thought subconsciously crossed his mind...
’Did I hear that wrong?’
He knew his emotional intelligence wasn’t particularly high.
Whenever he explained problems, Wang Hao would say he was "unapproachable."
He had always considered himself the type of person who was bad at reading the room.
But today, at the interview table,
he had met someone even worse at it than he was.
Once Li Dong confirmed he hadn’t misheard, he let out a sigh.
He raised his head and looked at Wang Feng.
"Wang Feng."
"Because you’re dishonest."
His tone was level.
"I asked you to talk about your own understanding."
"You took a passage from Labesse’s book—someone else’s understanding—to try and fool us."
"Mathematics is a very rigorous discipline."
"It tolerates no falsehoods or deception."
"With someone like you in my group, I’m afraid there would be problems."
He paused for a moment and continued.
"And I don’t think this attitude is just bad for academia."
"Even if you don’t pursue an academic career, don’t go into research, and end up in a different field,"
"this habit of faking things will cause you trouble sooner or later."
After Li Dong finished speaking, he himself felt a bit awkward.
He sounded like some old, preachy official.
This made Wang Feng even more indignant.
’You’re a college student not even twenty years old. You’ve made a name for yourself in math, and now you’re lecturing me on how to live my life?’
He had a thousand retorts on the tip of his tongue.
But he wasn’t a complete idiot.
He hadn’t graduated yet.
He was well aware of the influence Li Dong had at Yan University.
’If this kid says the wrong thing, I might not even get my master’s degree. Now *that* would be a real problem.’
He suppressed his simmering indignation.
He raised his head and nodded at Li Dong.
His face wore a look of "I accept your criticism."
"East God, I understand."
"It won’t happen again."
He thought he sounded perfectly natural.
But to a seasoned actor like Li Dong, the performance was painfully amateurish.
’The kid doesn’t mean a word of it.’
But Li Dong couldn’t be bothered to care.
’As long as the kid stays out of my way in the future, it’s fine.’
Li Dong grunted a soft "Mm."
"Alright, go over there."
Wang Feng stood up, turned, and walked to the corner.
The moment he reached the corner, the corners of his mouth turned down imperceptibly.
No one in the room saw.
「...」
With that, the interviews were over.
Wang Zhigang sorted through the list. In total, eight graduate students had made the cut.
That was nearly half of the day’s interviewees.
The acceptance rate wasn’t low, all things considered.
After all, Wang Zhigang, Penrose, and Liu Ruochuan had already run a few rounds of screening.
Everyone who made it to this room today was already a "top student" who had survived the initial cuts.
Liu Ruochuan walked over and patted Li Dong’s shoulder.
"Kid."
"Your group is even stricter than mine."
"A few of the ones you rejected today..."
"...were from my old group."
When Li Dong heard this, his face showed a moment of genuine embarrassment.
Liu Ruochuan was his teacher, after all.
He quickly explained.
"Professor..."
"It’s mainly a matter of research direction, not that..."
Before he could finish, Liu Ruochuan smiled, waved his hand, and interrupted him.
"Alright, alright, kid."
"Being strict is a good thing."
"This thing you’re doing now..."
He lowered his voice a little.
"Even Teacher Tian was thinking of joining."
"He was too proud to ask. When you have a free day, you should go and invite him personally."
Li Dong was speechless.
After Liu Ruochuan finished speaking, he smiled and went back to his seat.
Li Dong stood in place for a good while.
He made a silent mental note.
’Invite Teacher Tian.’
He’d have to set aside a whole day for this later.
「...」
After the interviews, the students who hadn’t made the cut had left.
Wang Zhigang raised a hand, signaling for quiet.
Then, he turned to Li Dong and said,
"Li Dong, why don’t you say a few words to everyone?"
Li Dong nodded and stood up.
"Our research group is really only focused on one thing: putting the capstone on the Langlands Program."
As soon as he said it,
everyone in the room—including the senior professors who already knew the goal—couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath at how bluntly he’d put it.
Li Dong knew what he was doing.
He wasn’t here to be polite.
He wasn’t good at making pretty speeches.
If he had said something like, "Our goal is to make our due contribution toward the advancement of the Langlands Program," the dozen or so people in the room would walk out and forget every word.
He had to speak plainly.
"Putting the capstone on it" was plain talk.
He continued.
"So, how do we build that capstone?"
"Our group plans to approach this from two directions."
"The first is to follow the conjecture given at the end of my previous paper on universality..."
He paused.
"People are calling it the Li Clan Conjecture now."
He still felt a little awkward saying those three words himself.
"Our goal along this path is to prove it."
"The second path stems from the equivalence criterion for zeros on general reductive algebraic groups."
"We’ll combine that with the local-global compatibility for GL(n) to push toward functoriality."
"Once those two lines of inquiry converge at any point, the final gap in the roof of the Langlands edifice will be ready to close."
He delivered these lines slowly.
Everyone in the room was listening intently.
Li Dong continued.
"As for the specific division of labor,"
"I’d like you all to follow Professor Wang’s arrangements."
"Professor Wang will assign each task to the person best suited for it."
"As for the specific research directions, I will coordinate with Professor Wang directly."

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