One afternoon, Li Dong was once again sitting by a window in the library.
On the table next to him was a pile of books, dozens of them in total.
And he was flipping through them incredibly fast.
He spent no more than two seconds on each page.
The other students nearby were already used to it.
This was East God, after all.
Who in the library hadn’t witnessed Li Dong’s page-flipping speed a few times by now?
Just as Li Dong closed the copy of Spectral Methods in MATLAB in his hands,
He felt a light tap on his shoulder.
Li Dong turned to look.
It was actually Gu God from the School of Mathematics—Gu Ming.
"East God, what a coincidence."
Gu Ming greeted Li Dong.
Li Dong was quite surprised as well.
Lately, he’d often heard Wang Hao talk about how amazing Gu God was, how just a sentence or two from him could lead to a breakthrough. He never expected to run into him in the library today.
He smiled and returned the greeting.
"Senior Brother Gu."
"You and Haozi... no, Wang Hao, how are your preparations for the national competition going?"
"He hasn’t brought shame to our Dorm 404, has he?"
Gu Ming laughed and quickly waved his hands.
"East God, please don’t call me Senior Brother. Just Gu Ming is fine."
"As for Wang Hao, he’s very skilled."
"As expected of someone who shares a dorm with East God."
Gu Ming wasn’t just being polite.
That kid Wang Hao had recently managed to seriously impress their faculty advisor during several problem-breakdown sessions.
Especially in the area of nonlinear dynamical systems, Wang Hao had coded a piecewise stability criterion from scratch, which directly invalidated a third of the solution initially proposed by the advisor.
The guy really had something.
"That’s good to hear."
Li Dong smiled.
After smiling, he himself felt the scene was a bit strange.
He felt like a proud father who, after entrusting his child to someone else, was pleased to hear that the child was doing well out in the world.
Before Li Dong could continue the act,
Gu Ming leaned in a little closer and said in a low voice,
"East God, um..."
Li Dong looked up.
"Senior Brother Gu, if you have something to say, just say it."
"We know each other well enough. No need to beat around the bush."
’...Are we really that close?’
Gu Ming complained inwardly, but he didn’t dare say it out loud.
He cleared his throat.
"East God."
"I want to join your research group."
Li Dong froze for a moment, then immediately understood.
’Professor Wang must have started making moves.’
Li Dong thought for a moment and said,
"Senior Brother Gu, you can just go to Professor Wang directly about this."
"He’s the one in charge of recruitment for the group."
Gu Ming’s expression turned a little sour.
"East God..."
"I already asked."
He sighed.
"Professor Wang has a strict academic qualification requirement..."
"Undergraduates can’t join."
Li Dong: "..."
Only then did he remember that Professor Wang seemed to have mentioned it before.
As a principle, no undergraduates.
After all, the bone his research group was trying to chew was the toughest part of the Langlands Program.
An average undergraduate wouldn’t just be unable to help—they probably wouldn’t even understand most of it.
So, Professor Wang was being responsible for the entire group.
However...
Li Dong had a good sense of Gu Ming’s abilities.
That time at the School of Chemistry, after Li Dong had jolted him awake with a question about "relaxation time and turnover time," Gu Ming had quickly constructed a new semi-Markov framework.
That showed real genius.
And ever since then, Li Dong could sense something about this young man...
Attributes!
Although he couldn’t see Gu Ming’s, his intuition told him this kid’s attributes were at least on par with his own 0.1 from back then.
But he couldn’t just come out and say that.
So Li Dong thought for a moment and said,
"Senior Brother Gu, here’s what you do."
"Contact Professor Wang and tell him I sent you."
"You should come for the interview too."
"I don’t know if you’ll pass. That will depend on your performance on the day."
Gu Ming’s eyes instantly lit up.
"That’s enough."
"East God, all I wanted was a chance."
"I’m not trying to get in through the back door."
Li Dong nodded.
"Then that’s settled."
"I’m not opening the door for you, just giving you a chance."
"You’re the one who has to pass Professor Wang’s test."
"Understood."
Gu Ming nodded emphatically.
He didn’t disturb him any further and waved to Li Dong.
"I’ll get going then. I won’t keep you from your reading."
Before leaving, he couldn’t help but glance back at the stack of books on the table, which was piled so high it looked about to topple over.
Jeez.
’Each one of those looks like it would take me half a semester to get through.’
’Is East God trying to devour the entire field of applied mathematics?’
Gu Ming sighed and turned to leave.
School of Mathematics, Men’s Graduate Dormitory.
Fu Chen sat at his desk, which was covered in printed-out papers densely marked up with red pen.
He was one of Professor Wang Zhigang’s graduate students.
Following the direction Professor Wang had chosen for him, he was working on a branch problem of the local Langlands correspondence for GL2 over p-adic fields.
Normally, a graduate student of his caliber wouldn’t be qualified to interview for Li Dong’s research group.
Professor Wang didn’t just have a bar for undergraduates; he had one for master’s students too...
Even for the "master’s student exception," it had to be a top student who had spent a year or two with an advisor exploring automorphic forms and could smoothly work through the ramification index and Hecke algebras.
An ordinary second-year master’s student wouldn’t stand a chance.
The reason Fu Chen was able to go was also very simple.
Professor Wang had been advising him for over a year and had a good grasp of his abilities and familiarity with this subject.
Professor Wang had specifically named him.
"Xiaofu, you need to prepare well."
"When the time comes, besides me and Li Dong, several other teachers and professors will also be there to interview you."
Therefore, Fu Chen cherished this opportunity.
He wasn’t one of those exceptionally brilliant kids.
But he was steadfast.
This was precisely what Professor Wang valued in him, and why he had continued to mentor him.

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