December.
In an apartment in Jinling
Li Dong sat in front of his computer in the apartment. On the desk lay a thick stack of draft paper, the top sheet densely covered in red circles.
The coffee on his desk had gone cold and been refilled, then gone cold again. After pouring the last cup, he had completely forgotten about it.
The computer screen displayed:
[Main Peak Arrival Window: T? + 17 months (± 1 week)]
[Magnitude: Carrington Level]
[Posterior Confidence: 93.7%]
He had forcefully narrowed it down from 17.1 months ± 1.3 months to 17 months ± 1 week.
That one-week error bar was the result of countless sleepless nights.
Of course, he couldn’t have done it alone.
Principal Gong and Principal Li had helped him.
The very night they received his call, the two principals had split his list of requirements into several parts and gone off separately to request the data.
Nearly twenty years of magnetic field and sunspot archives from the Huairou Solar Observatory.
Raw records from several solar activity surveys jointly conducted by the Zijin Mountain Observatory and the Yunnan Observatory.
High-energy particle archives from the early on-board space environment monitors of the Fengyun-2 and Fengyun-3 satellites.
Over a decade of concurrent data on magnetospheric currents and ionospheric disturbances from the Meridian Project’s ground station array.
They even dug up a few archived magnetic tapes from the old China-Russia collaboration, remnants from the Soviet INTERBALL satellite. That stuff had been lying in the archives of the Moscow Space Research Institute for nearly thirty years.
Li Dong fell silent for a moment when he first saw the list.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know what projects were currently active internationally.
The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, JAXA’s ARASE, the IceCube in Antarctica, Argentina’s Pierre Auger Array...
Not a single one of those was within his reach.
What he could get was what he held in his hands.
Li Dong rubbed his temples.
’When it comes to data, newer isn’t always better,’ he thought.
’The twenty-year magnetic field archive from Huairou Station has a long enough baseline. The signal-to-noise ratio of the early Fengyun models is a bit lacking, but the energy bands match up. And the complete record of the 1990s solar cycle from Interball can fill a crucial gap.’
’If I piece it all together, it’ll be enough.’
Li Dong read through the warning bulletin one more time from beginning to end.
Data sources, error analysis, sensitivity tests, limiting conditions for the extrapolation hypothesis—he had triple-checked every section with himself over and over.
’No problems.’
He moved the mouse cursor over the upload button.
The screen flashed: [ARXIV preprint submitted].
Immediately after, he attached the same manuscript to an email and sent it to the submission inbox for *Nature*, CC’ing Chang Jin for good measure.
After all that, Li Dong leaned back in his chair and stretched luxuriously.
"Well, that’s all I can do."
"As for whether they believe it or not, that’s out of my hands."
...
Just then, the phone on his desk rang.
It was a call from Tian Gang. He answered it.
"Hello, Teacher Tian."
"Li Dong, how are things going with your work over in Jinling?"
Li Dong mentally took stock of the situation.
’The work with the Wukong Team is really done. I heard the paper was submitted, too. The prize money will have to wait until all the paperwork is processed, which will probably drag on until early next year.’
"It’s pretty much wrapped up," Li Dong said. "Even if there’s anything left to do in Jinling, it’ll have to wait until next year."
Tian Gang’s laughter came through the phone.
"Even if you do have something, you’ll have to push it back for me."
"Huh?"
"The 22nd of this month. Bin City."
"Hmm?"
"Polytechnic University. The annual mathematics conference."
"Basically every active mathematician in the country will be there this time. Don’t you forget."
It was only then that Li Dong remembered.
This conference was held every year. It was the one opportunity for all of China’s mathematicians, both senior and up-and-coming, to gather in one place.
"Got it, Teacher Tian."
Li Dong quickly agreed.
"I’ll definitely be there on the 22nd."
"Good. Then it’s settled."
With that, Tian Gang hung up.
After hanging up with Tian Gang, Li Dong thought of Wu Kai and gave him a call as well.
Wu Kai said the patent was still being revised but should be approved around the beginning of the year.
Li Dong calculated in his head. Once this pile of tasks was through the pipeline, he could go back to reaping the rewards from Madam Curie and Mendeleev.
After the two calls, Li Dong tossed his phone aside and flopped onto his bed.
He really hadn’t slept well lately.
The moment his head hit the pillow, he was out.
...
While Li Dong was catching up on sleep,
the academic world had already been buzzing for several days.
The cause was a paper from Huaxia.
"Direct Detection of the Spectral Break in Cosmic-Ray Electrons at TeV Energies by the Wukong Satellite."
The corresponding authors listed were two names—Shen Che and Li Dong.
The electron-positron cosmic-ray energy spectrum in the TeV range, accumulated over eight years by the Wukong Satellite, had for the first time been directly measured up to 4.6 TeV, locking in a spectral break feature at 0.9 TeV.
For the past few years, this gap in the data had only been covered by indirect observations from H.E.S.S., but the systematic error was too large for direct citation.
Now, it had been filled.
And filled solidly.
The groups in North America and Europe working on indirect dark matter detection and the origin of high-energy cosmic rays held several consecutive days of internal discussion meetings.
From now on, in the field of TeV-range electron spectrum, Huaxia had become an indispensable player.
However, what their peers found even more remarkable wasn’t the result itself.
It was the inversion method used in the paper.
The Li Criterion.
When citing the Li Criterion, the paper included a footnote.
[Regarding the inversion criterion used in this work, some peers in the academic community have previously referred to it as the "Li Criterion." A correction needs to be made here... (abridged)]
Several mid-career researchers in the international community who worked on inverse problems fell silent for a long while after seeing this footnote.
The academic world’s assessment of this young man quietly rose another level.
...
Meanwhile, in Europe.
Zurich.
Main campus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
The afternoon sun slanted in through the high windows on one side of the hallway, landing on the dark wooden floor.
Clara was walking toward Professor Bruner’s office, holding her laptop.
She was wearing a slim-fitting, dark-colored turtleneck knit sweater, a pair of neatly tailored cigarette pants, and low-heeled ankle boots.
A few male doctoral students walking toward her in the hallway let their gazes linger on her for a second or two before quickly looking away.
Clara paid them no mind.
She was in a good mood today.
She had just finished rewriting her warning bulletin—the one that had been rejected in turn by *Nature*, *Science*, and *PRL*.
She had also narrowed down the prediction for the main peak’s arrival window to within a year.
Reaching the office door, she knocked, then pushed it open and went inside.
"Professor."
Professor Bruner was sitting behind his desk.
A printed paper lay on the desk.
He had one hand propping up his chin and the other holding a pen, reading line by line.
"Professor?"
Clara called out again.
Only then did Professor Bruner look up.
"Have you finished writing that warning bulletin of yours?"
"All done, Professor."
Clara walked over with a smile.
"What are you reading?"
Professor Bruner put down his pen.
"A paper from Huaxia."
He sighed and pushed the printout toward her.
"It’s beautiful."
Curious, Clara stepped forward and leaned over to look at the paper.
Title: Wukong Satellite, TeV range, electron spectrum, break.
Then she skipped the abstract, introduction, and instrument description, flipping directly to the methodology section.
When she saw the specific formulation of the inversion method, Clara’s breath caught.
The Li Criterion.
It was used so cleanly.
The extension was direct, with no superfluous steps.
She had seen a couple of minor papers that used the Li Criterion before, but they had all just applied it as a ready-made tool.
But this one was different.
The application in this paper pushed the criterion itself from its original form into a new scenario. The structure was tight, and every transitional step was free of unnecessary patches.
It was as if the criterion had been originally designed for the Wukong Satellite’s eleven signal bins.
Clara looked up.
"Professor."
"Who was it that applied the Li Criterion here?"
Professor Bruner said flatly,
"Who else could it be but Li Dong?"
"But you can’t call it the Li Criterion anymore."
He tapped the tip of his pen on the paper’s footnote.
Clara followed his gesture and saw...
["...some peers in the academic community have previously referred to it as the ’Li Criterion.’ A correction needs to be made here..."]
Clara froze on the spot.
She wasn’t sure if the feeling those words stirred in her heart was shock, or something else.
Li Dong had personally taken down the name "Li Criterion," a name that international peers were already getting used to saying.
And gave it back to that Soviet scientist from sixty years ago.
For such a young man to do something like this...
’If it were me...’
Clara subconsciously asked herself.
’If it were me, would I have done the same?’
She thought for a few seconds, then a confident smile appeared on her face.
’Yes, I would.’
But just as that thought arose, the smile on her face collapsed.
"But..."
"I couldn’t have created the Li Criterion in the first place."

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