Li Dong saw the look in his eyes.
That little bit of mischievousness inside him instantly flared up.
He gave Chen Yue a smile.
"Chen Yue."
"Work hard."
"And remember, when you apply for grad school, pick me as your advisor."
Chen Yue’s face darkened on the spot.
He subconsciously opened his mouth, but this was a formal presentation, and he couldn’t curse back in front of the judges.
He could only bottle it up.
Seeing Chen Yue’s bottled-up expression, Li Dong couldn’t hold back.
He burst out laughing.
Then he waved his hand at Chen Yue.
"Wait for me outside."
"We’ll get together later."
Face still dark, Chen Yue nodded and left.
Next came the official vote.
Zhang Wenping spoke first.
"Everyone."
"Out of the five candidates, based on today’s performances, I think we all have a clear idea."
"One group from Yan University."
"And one group from Sichuan University."
"As for the other three, let’s set them aside for now."
None of the judges objected.
But there was a problem...
Based on their performances today, it was impossible to say the Yan University team or the Sichuan University team had outshone the other.
Professor Min Ziqiang spoke up first.
"The Yan University team has solid fundamentals."
"Vector ray tracing, hierarchical AABB, robustness analysis—every part was done very solidly."
"It’s practical for engineering applications."
Professor Wen Jingxing added,
"But the Sichuan University team’s path—from discrete to continuous, and then from geometry to probability density—was truly beautiful."
"At its core, it wasn’t really mathematical modeling."
"It was physics."
The judges in the room exchanged another glance.
The preference each person voiced wasn’t because they thought the other team was lacking.
It was simply that their preferred team’s approach resonated more with them personally.
They couldn’t choose.
Zhang Wenping thought for a moment and said,
"Li Dong."
"You decide."
According to the rules of the national mathematical modeling competition’s review committee, the final decision wasn’t supposed to fall to Li Dong, the most junior member.
But this time, Zhang Wenping had his own reasons for entrusting this matter to Li Dong.
The Higher Education Press Cup is an award for the new generation of young people who are just emerging.
And among the judges in the room, Li Dong was the youngest.
He was only twenty this year.
He was the closest to this batch of undergraduates.
And...
He also had the qualifications.
Li Dong didn’t decline this time.
"Professors, in that case, I’ll share my thoughts."
"Personally, I think we should go with the Sichuan University team."
He continued to explain.
"It’s not that I think the Yan University team is worse than Sichuan University’s."
"But there’s something I personally value more."
"And that is, the Sichuan University team looked at the problem from outside the box."
"They didn’t treat the thousands of Sun-Fixing Mirrors as thousands of individual mirrors to be solved."
"They treated the entire field as a continuous density field to be solved."
"Just now, Teacher Wen said that at its core, this approach is physics, and I see it the same way."
He paused for a moment.
"In our line of work, in scientific research, this is the kind of spirit we ultimately need."
"You can’t just solve the problem at hand."
"You have to be able to step outside the problem and look at it from a higher level."
After he finished, the other judges in the room thought about it, and no one objected.
Zhang Wenping didn’t waste any more time. He closed the folder in front of him.
"Then it’s this one."
"The Sichuan University team, for the 2023 Higher Education Press Cup."
Then, the judges in the room all signed their names on the list, and the winner of this year’s Higher Education Press Cup was decided just like that.
As the judges were getting up,
Wen Jingxing said to Zhang Wenping beside him,
"Old Zhang, that Chen Yue..."
"At our Zhejiang University’s Institute for Advanced Study, I still have one admissions spot open this year."
How could Zhang Wenping not know what he was thinking? He shook his head and said,
"Old Wen."
"Didn’t you hear Li Dong’s ’pick me as your advisor’ just now?"
Wen Jingxing: ...
Just then, Li Dong finished organizing the day’s scoring sheets and handed them to Zhang Wenping.
"Teacher Zhang."
"Professors, I’ll be taking my leave now."
Zhang Wenping waved his hand.
"Go on, go on."
Li Dong smiled, bade farewell to the professors, and turned to leave the Si Yuan Building.
Then, in the distance, he saw Chen Yue sitting on a stone bench by the road, playing on his phone.
As Li Dong got closer, he could hear the roars of an online player from the phone.
"Do you even know how to play marksman?!"
Li Dong: ...
"Old Chen."
"Stop playing."
"Come on, let’s go eat."
Chen Yue didn’t even look up.
He grumbled as he locked his phone screen.
"What’s there to eat?"
"The food in Jinling was awful when I first got here."
Li Dong quickly clapped a hand over his mouth.
He glanced around.
"Don’t talk nonsense."
"It’s that we’re not used to it, not that it’s bad."
Chen Yue rolled his eyes.
"Same difference."
The two of them walked off, laughing and joking, down the small path from the Si Yuan Building toward the school gate.
The September sun in Jinling was no longer as fierce as it had been during the summer.
A breeze rustled through the plane tree leaves near the Si Yuan Building.
Bicycles were parked haphazardly on both sides of the road, their bells tinkling in the wind.
As they walked, Chen Yue said,
"Dongzi."
"You didn’t come back to Sichuan and Chongqing last year."
"Liangzi and I still met up."
Li Dong hummed in acknowledgment.
"How’s Liangzi doing now?"
Chen Yue pursed his lips.
"He’s studying hard for the grad school entrance exams."
Li Dong was taken aback for a second.
"He’s prepping for the grad school exams as a freshman?"
Chen Yue nodded.
"It’s all because of you."
"You have no idea. At our Seventh Middle School, whenever there’s the start of a new semester or a major announcement, the school always brings you up."
"And those two speeches you gave at the opening ceremonies—Liangzi says his school plays them all the time too."
Li Dong just said, "Oh."
He didn’t know what to say. ’Liu Liang is going about this the wrong way,’ he thought.
After walking a few more steps, Chen Yue spoke again.

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