December 21st, Thursday.
Li Dong dragged his suitcase across the jet bridge and into Bin City Zhou Shuizi International Airport.
A light snow was falling outside. Li Dong lifted his suitcase off the baggage carousel and followed the flow of people out of the arrivals hall.
According to the WeChat message Liu Ruochuan had sent him, the conference organizers would have someone at the airport to pick him up.
Outside the airport, Li Dong looked past the railings.
There were quite a few people holding pickup signs, and soon he spotted one with the two words "Li Dong" written on it.
The person holding the sign was a middle-aged man who looked to be in his forties.
Li Dong pushed his suitcase and walked toward him.
The middle-aged man noticed Li Dong as well, immediately putting down the sign and walking over with a smile.
"You must be Li Dong, right?"
"I am." Li Dong nodded.
"Teacher Tian had something come up and couldn’t get away, so he asked me to pick you up." The man folded the sign, tucked it under his arm, and extended his right hand to Li Dong. "My name is Fu Bao Hua."
Fu Bao Hua?
When Li Dong heard the name, he froze for a half-second.
There was no way he wouldn’t recognize that name.
In the domestic field of Algebraic Geometry, Fu Bao Hua was a name one could hardly avoid.
After graduating from Yan University’s mathematics department in ’95, he had first earned an engineering degree from the Paris Institute of Technology, then a master’s from the University of Paris VI, and finally gone to the University of Nice to study for his doctorate under Arno Boivelle.
Boville was an old-guard grandmaster in international Algebraic Geometry. The doctoral dissertation Fu Bao Hua wrote under his supervision, on the resolution of symplectic singularities, is still repeatedly cited by peers today.
After completing his doctorate, he spent several more years at the French National Center for Scientific research before returning to the country and joining the Chinese Academy of Sciences Mathematics and System Science Institute.
A recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and one of the leading figures in domestic Algebraic Geometry.
In terms of seniority, he was countless tiers above Li Dong.
Li Dong had originally assumed the person sent by the conference organizers would be, at most, a junior faculty member in charge of conference affairs.
Teacher Tian had actually sent Fu Bao Hua to pick him up?
’This... isn’t this a bit much?’
Li Dong said politely,
"Professor Fu, hello! Thank you for coming all this way."
Fu Bao Hua smiled and shook his head.
"Oh, don’t call me Professor Fu."
"I’m from the Class of ’95 at Yan University. You can just call me Brother."
Hearing this, Li Dong’s expression stiffened slightly.
’Brother?’
Technically, Fu Bao Hua was already forty-seven this year, more than twenty years his senior.
Calling him ’Brother’ just felt a little awkward no matter how he thought about it.
However, since the man himself had said so, stubbornly sticking to "Professor Fu" would just make him seem distant.
So, Li Dong decided to go with the flow.
"Well then, Brother Fu, thank you for your trouble."
Fu Bao Hua patted him on the shoulder.
Then his gaze fell upon Li Dong, and he frowned slightly.
Li Dong was wearing an ordinary dark gray down jacket, with a sweater thrown on underneath, paired with jeans and sneakers.
He looked every bit a student on a trip.
"These clothes of yours," Fu Bao Hua began, choosing his words carefully, "feel a bit too casual."
Li Dong glanced down at himself.
’What’s so casual about it?’
Fu Bao Hua continued,
"How about I take you to buy something a little more formal?"
Li Dong was even more baffled.
’Why would I need to dress so formally?’
"Brother Fu, it’s not like I have a presentation to give."
Fu Bao Hua paused, then asked with some confusion,
"Who said you don’t have a presentation to give? You’re an invited speaker—a one-hour talk."
Now Li Dong was truly dumbfounded.
Invited speaker, a one-hour talk.
"No one told me," Li Dong said, perplexed.
"It’s standard practice," Fu Bao Hua said matter-of-factly.
Standard practice.
In truth, Li Dong wasn’t familiar with this conference’s "standard practices."
He usually only heard about the Huaxia Mathematical Society’s annual meeting through the news; this was the first time he’d ever been invited to attend.
Fine.
Standard practice it is, then.
Li Dong didn’t dwell on it.
Since he had to give a presentation, his current outfit was indeed a bit too casual.
Fu Bao Hua led him from the airport, and they drove into the city, stopping at a moderately sized menswear shop.
Fu Bao Hua basically took charge of the entire process of picking out clothes.
Li Dong was tall with broad shoulders, and after putting on a dark gray wool suit jacket, he looked much sharper.
It was paired with black dress pants, a white dress shirt, and a solid-colored tie.
The whole outfit came to four or five thousand yuan.
Li Dong’s eyelid twitched. He was just about to grit his teeth and pay for it.
Fu Bao Hua waved his hand dismissively.
"You don’t need to pay."
He thought for a moment, then added with a smile,
"Teacher Tian mentioned that you can be a bit... thrifty. The conference will reimburse it."
Li Dong: "..."
’Has my reputation for being thrifty really spread this far in the mathematics community?’
Afterward, Fu Bao Hua drove Li Dong to the hotel.
According to the conference arrangements, the main venue for this year’s Huaxia Mathematical Society annual meeting was the Dalian Shangri-La Hotel, with breakout sessions held at the nearby Furama Hotel.
Many conference attendees could already be seen in the Shangri-La’s lobby, with middle-aged men in suits and leather shoes gathered in small groups, chatting.
Li Dong glanced around from a distance and was surprised to recognize a few people, even just from their backs.
After they finished the check-in process, Fu Bao Hua walked him to his room door.
"I have some other things to take care of. You get some rest. Dinner is at the hotel restaurant; just use your room key."
"Alright. You go on ahead, Brother Fu."
Fu Bao Hua nodded and turned to leave.
Li Dong pushed the door open, rolled his suitcase inside, and plopped down on the edge of the bed.
The snow was still falling outside the window.
At dinnertime, Li Dong went down to the first-floor restaurant.
The restaurant was already bustling with activity.
As soon as he entered, he felt several pairs of eyes fall on him.
Looking around, the vast majority of people in the restaurant were middle-aged, in their forties and fifties.
You could count the number of faces under thirty on one hand.
’At his age, to be sitting here... anyone could guess who he was, even with their eyes closed, right?’
Li Dong couldn’t be bothered with the stares. He found a window seat for himself and ordered a few Sichuan dishes.
As he ate, people would occasionally walk by, and each would glance his way.
Some simply looked out of curiosity, while others paused to give him a nod.
Li Dong politely nodded back to each of them.
But he didn’t strike up a conversation with anyone.
He preferred to eat his meals in peace.
The meal was uneventful.
Li Dong wiped his mouth, preparing to get up and return to his room to rest.
Just as he was pushing his chair back, a voice came from beside him.
"You’re Li Dong, I presume?"
Li Dong looked up.
The man who had approached was in his early forties.
He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater under a dark gray suit jacket.
Li Dong stood up and politely extended his hand.
"Hello, I’m Li Dong. And you are?"
The middle-aged man smiled slightly and gave Li Dong’s hand a gentle shake.
"I’m from Capital University. Luo Yu."
After saying that, he fell silent.
It was as if the name itself was enough of an explanation, and he had no intention of adding anything more.
However, after hearing those two words, Li Dong wracked his brain but couldn’t come up with any matching information.
Luo Yu?
’Which Luo Yu?’
’That name...’
He had genuinely never heard of it.
But since the man was from Capital University and able to attend a conference of this caliber, he must have some level of expertise.
Li Dong couldn’t feign the excitement of an "Ah, I’ve heard so much about you!" and could only offer a lukewarm reply.
"Hello, Professor Luo."
The smile on Luo Yu’s face seemed to freeze for an instant.
He didn’t see the reaction he’d been hoping for on Li Dong’s face, but he quickly recovered.
"I hear," Luo Yu began, slowing his speech, "that your research group is working on the capstone of the Langlands Program? Have you made any progress so far?"
Hearing this, Li Dong felt a faint sense of discomfort.
’What does he mean, "have you made any progress so far"?’
’That question is far too forward.’
It’s not that there’s no communication in academia, but serious progress like this is either published in journals, presented in special reports, or at the very least, discussed only among colleagues with close personal relationships.
’He’s never even met Luo Yu before, okay?’
’What progress I’ve made is none of your damn business.’
’You can just watch the journals yourself and wait for the paper to come out.’
’Am I supposed to list out my research group’s progress for you item by item?’
But these were just things Li Dong complained about in his head.
On the surface, he maintained his polite demeanor.
"We’ve just gotten started. No significant results yet."
After hearing this, an "as-expected" expression appeared on Luo Yu’s face.
Then, he cleared his throat and said,
"As it happens, I’ve also done some research on Langlands."
Li Dong: "..."
"How about this," Luo Yu said with a smile. "I’ll join your group and lend a hand. Maybe I can help speed up the process."
The faint discomfort Li Dong had been feeling instantly escalated.
In academia, joining a research group wasn’t something you could do just because you wanted to.
Unless you were a renowned heavyweight in the field, you generally had to wait for an invitation from the group you wanted to join.
Even someone like Tian Gang had to ask Liu Ruochuan to pass a message, prompting Li Dong to invite him.
And this Luo Yu right here...
Sorry, but Li Dong still hadn’t even figured out who he was.
’And with that, he just asks to join the group?’
In his mind, Li Dong silently slapped a label on Luo Yu.
Dumbass.
Having made this judgment in his mind, his polite expression began to crumble.
"Professor Luo," Li Dong said with a slight smile, "I don’t think that will be necessary."
He paused, then added,
"Everyone in our group has all their limbs. We’re not short on hands."
Without giving Luo Yu a chance to reply, Li Dong walked around him and headed for the restaurant exit.
Behind him, Luo Yu stood frozen in place, his face alternating between pale and ashen.

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