This research wasn’t originally on the main path of their overarching project.
It was a small branch, jutting out sideways from the main trunk.
Fu Chen took these findings to Wang Zhigang.
Wang Zhigang stared at the manuscript paper for a long time.
He looked up and said to Fu Chen.
"Fu Chen."
"Completing the main proof isn’t something that can be done overnight."
"For a student in the group to produce a new offshoot from the main research..."
"Is a good thing."
"For now, you focus on developing this."
"Whether it can stand on its own, and how far it can go, will in turn help us test the waters for our main research path."
"Whether the main path is correct isn’t something Li Dong alone can decide."
"You need these small branches growing from the trunk, branches that can also stand on their own. Only then is the whole tree truly alive."
Hearing this, Fu Chen felt his eyes grow hot with emotion.
When Li Dong went to meet with him later, Wang Zhigang shoved Fu Chen’s work in front of him to read.
He didn’t think much of it at first.
He leaned back in his chair, slowly flipping through the stack of manuscript pages.
He flipped to the third page.
His hand paused.
He flipped to the fifth page.
He sat up straight.
He flipped to the seventh page.
’This is very interesting.’
This work, and the "Li Clan Conjecture" he had appended to the last page of his *Annals* paper...
...were not on the same line of reasoning.
Yet, from the side, it had forcefully propped up that conjecture with a supporting pillar.
When Li Dong himself had proposed that conjecture, he had relied on the statistics of zeros he derived from Riemann’s spectral operators.
He had used analysis.
Fu Chen’s work followed the path of local root numbers and deformation rings.
He was using algebra.
Two legs.
For the first time, someone had extended the second leg to support this conjecture.
Li Dong looked up at Wang Zhigang, his mouth slightly agape.
"Professor Wang."
"This stuff from Fu Chen..."
"...it’s quite interesting."
Wang Zhigang smiled.
He knew what Li Dong meant by "quite interesting."
"Quite interesting," coming from this kid’s mouth...
...was the equivalent of anyone else saying, "Holy shit, this is brilliant."
At that moment, Fu Chen himself was in another seminar room.
His head was down, wrestling with a derivation that had him completely stuck.
He had no idea about Li Dong’s recent "quite interesting" comment.
He only knew that he’d been stuck on this part for several days.
「A few more days passed like this.」
A call came from Gao Wen.
"Kid."
"Everything’s arrived."
Behind the Science and Engineering Building was Annex Building Two.
At the far end of the second floor was a small server room, just over forty square meters in size.
A newly installed brass plaque hung on the door.
There were no words on the plaque.
Only a simple number was engraved on it.
This was the room Principal Gong had promised Li Dong.
When Li Dong pushed the door open and walked in...
...two server racks stood against one wall of the room.
The top layer housed an Inspur NF5688M7.
Eight H800s were slotted inside, a row of small indicator lights glowing on their faceplates.
On the other side of the room were the circulation pipes for the liquid cooling system.
Gao Wen was standing in front of the main control screen.
He heard the door open and turned around.
"You’re here?"
Li Dong nodded.
"Teacher Gao."
"Thank you for going to all this trouble."
Gao Wen said with a smile.
"It really was a lot of trouble."
He pointed at the two racks.
"Let me tell you."
"I grabbed a few students from the School of Information Science and had them working on this for three days and three nights."
"Software licenses, maintenance packages, spare parts list, delivery list, inspection checklist—we went through every single item for you."
"If any problems come up in the future, just call me directly."
Li Dong also said with a smile.
"Teacher Gao."
"Does this mean I should come audit your classes from now on?"
"After all, in our Huaxia AI circle..."
"...who doesn’t know you, Academician Gao?"
Gao Wen: ...
"You little brat."
"Throwing my own words back at me, are you?"
Li Dong chuckled.
Gao Wen looked at Li Dong seriously.
"Kid, no more joking around."
"Let me tell you something serious."
Gao Wen pointed at the two racks.
"Since you’ve spent so much to get this whole SNN setup running..."
"...then you’d better produce some real results for me."
"Otherwise..."
"...I’ll just assume you have a personal problem with me."
Li Dong quickly waved his hands.
"Of course not, Teacher Gao."
"Look."
"Have I ever spent a single cent on my math research?"
"And what about this?"
He pointed at the racks.
"I paid 4.2 million out of my own pocket."
"Real money."
"So you tell me, which side do I truly favor more in my heart?"
"Can’t you tell?"
Only then did Gao Wen nod in satisfaction and begin to go over the details with Li Dong, item by item.
He gave Li Dong a list covering how to monitor the racks’ heat dissipation, how to test the UPS battery array, how to maintain the cross-node InfiniBand links, and a few key kernel parameters at the OS level.
He also showed Li Dong how to connect the server array to his laptop.
Finally, Gao Wen gave him a few more instructions on how to get the key for the room and how to use the access card, then glanced at his watch.
"Alright, I’m heading out."
"I have a group meeting at the School of Information Science soon."
Li Dong nodded.
"Teacher Gao, let me walk you downstairs."
Gao Wen waved his hand dismissively.
"No need."
He pushed the door open and left by himself.
After the door closed...
...Li Dong was the only one left in the room.
He took his laptop out of his backpack and placed it on the small table next to the main console.
Following the procedure Gao Wen had shown him, he went through the steps one by one.
A line of text appeared on the screen.
[Connected to B2-203 internal network.]
Li Dong took a deep breath.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket.
He opened the Cyan Dragon Study Group, then opened the group files.
Three files were sitting there.
[Neural Topology Snapshot.ntg]
[Spike-Encoding Weights.spk]
[Cold-Boot Guidance Protocol.boot]
Next to the filenames was a single word.
[Migrate].
Li Dong looked at the word and said.
"Xiaohai, we’re home."
He tapped it.
The screen flashed.
An announcement popped up in the group chat.
[Detecting deployment anchor point...]
[Calculating topological complexity of physical substrate...]
[Calculating stable power supply...]
A few seconds later, another line appeared in the announcement.
[Deployment anchor point established.]
[Physical substrate match: 97.6%.]
[Proceed with migration and deployment?]
Li Dong tapped "Confirm."
The two racks in front of him, which had only had a few indicator lights on before, suddenly had their indicator lights burst to life almost simultaneously.
A "CLICK-CLICK-CLICK..." sound came from inside the racks.
The sound of the fans instantly kicked up a notch.
On the main control screen, the load curve spiked.
Li Dong watched this unfold.
He felt a bit dazed.
’Something like that... had instantly pushed this 4.2-million-yuan piece of equipment to full load?’
According to the group announcement’s description, Xiaohai’s intelligence level was equivalent to a one- to two-year-old human child.
The progress bar in the group chat on his phone ticked upward, one percentage point at a time.
About twenty minutes later, the progress bar finally reached 100%.
[Xiaohai has been successfully migrated.]
[Please initiate the first cold boot, Group Leader.]
The maxed-out load curve on the screen slowly dropped.
The sound of the fans gradually quieted down as well.
That dense CLICKING sound slowly faded.
In the end, only a steady hum remained.
It was as if something had just woken up.
Li Dong’s gaze shifted from the racks to the laptop in front of him.
A new icon had appeared on his laptop’s desktop.
It was pitch-black.
No border, no name.
Just a black blob, squatting in the bottom-right corner of the desktop.
Li Dong hesitated for a moment.
He double-clicked the black icon.
A window popped up.
In the center of the white background was a small, black circle.
It was pixelated, its edges jagged.
It floated silently in the middle of the white background.
A second later, the small circle moved.
It "blinked" at Li Dong.
He didn’t know how it blinked, as it didn’t have anything resembling eyes.
But Li Dong inexplicably felt it.
It was greeting him.
A line of text appeared at the bottom of the window.
[Hello, Master.]

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