"—Li Dong."
When Tian Gang spoke those two words, the entire hall fell silent.
No one was unaware of who Li Dong was, nor did anyone feel his accomplishments were insufficient to win the Chen Shengshen Prize.
But he was just too young.
"Isn’t Li Dong only nineteen?"
"He’s already twenty this year."
"The Chen Shengshen Prize is being given to a twenty-year-old student?"
Most of the people sitting in the banquet hall were in their forties and fifties.
Some of their own children were even a year or two older than Li Dong.
The murmuring showed no signs of stopping.
But Tian Gang didn’t wait for it to stop.
He picked up the microphone.
"This award recipient,"
"is, to date, the youngest winner of the Chen Shengshen Mathematics Prize."
"Although he is very young,"
"I believe that when we look back in a few years, today might be seen as the easiest time I will ever have announcing this name."
That one sentence suppressed the murmurs in the hall.
"Let’s briefly review this young man’s work."
"Hold on, I have to read from my cards because there’s just so much."
Although he was joking, no one in the hall laughed, because it was the truth.
Tian Gang glanced at the card in his hand.
"In his freshman year of university, he took the boundary for Montgomery’s Conjecture on Association, which had been stuck at the dead end of |α|
"That dead end had not been moved for a full fifty years before him."
"This work was published in the *Mathematical Annals*."
Down in the audience, many professors specializing in analytic number theory nodded subconsciously.
They all knew just how many years progress had been stalled behind that |α|
"Next."
Tian Gang flipped to the next small card in his hand.
"There was the paper on the criterion for the zeros related to the local-global compatibility of automorphic representations of GL(n), co-authored with Professor Arthur Penrose and Mr. Yang Shengguo."
"Also published in the *Mathematical Annals*."
"This paper, for the first time, provided a tool for numerical verification regarding the foundational problems of the Langlands Program."
"At the end of the paper, he also left an open-ended conjecture."
"The field calls it—’Li’s Conjecture’."
The expressions of everyone in the audience shifted slightly.
There wasn’t a single person in the room today who didn’t recognize the name "Li’s Conjecture."
And there wasn’t a single person who didn’t understand the weight that name carried.
Tian Gang continued.
"Mr. Robert Langlands conducted a signed review for that paper. It was the first time the old gentleman had done a signed review in over twenty years."
"The old master left one final sentence."
"’To the next generation, I wish you luck.’"
"And then there’s Mr. Terence Tao."
"After that paper went online, he wrote a long post on his blog."
"His original words were,"
"’Until it is proven, there will be an entire generation of mathematicians in the world who will use it as a lighthouse, navigating by its light for ten, twenty, or thirty years.’"
"’We have not seen such a lighthouse for a very long time.’"
After Tian Gang finished reading this passage,
the mouths in the audience that had been muttering "he’s still a bit young" now fell silent.
"And then there is his most recent work."
"Our friends in physics have likely seen it in the last two months."
"*’Direct Detection of a Break in the Teravolt Cosmic-Ray Electron Spectrum with the Wukong Satellite.’*"
"The corresponding authors are Li Dong and Professor Shen Che."
"This paper bridged a gap in humanity’s direct detection of the TeV cosmic-ray electron spectrum, making it continuous."
"This was a gap that the field of astronomy hadn’t been able to fill for over a decade."
"In addition,"
Tian Gang seemed to recall something interesting.
"In this paper, a footnote was added where it cited the inversion criterion."
"That criterion in the paper was originally called the Li Criterion by many peers in the field."
"But Li Dong credited the criterion back to Gikhmanov."
For a moment, no one in the audience spoke.
For a few short seconds, the only sound in the hall was the faint, soft hum of the air conditioning vents.
"For a scholar,"
Tian Gang concluded softly.
"any single one of these accomplishments would be incredibly commendable."
After a brief silence, thunderous applause erupted. Most people in the audience were now convinced.
Of course, there were a few who were not.
This type of person refused to admit that they were inferior to Li Dong.
Their thinking was simple.
’Even though I didn’t accomplish it, that’s only because I was just short of a little inspiration.’
And the one with the worst control over his expression was Luo Yu.
He sat in the third row on the right, clapping louder than anyone, as if he were striking someone with each clap.
In his entire life, he had rarely tasted this kind of bitterness.
From the moment his parents sent him to a private high school in Switzerland, his path had been a straight line: an undergraduate degree from Princeton, a master’s from G?ttingen, a doctorate from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de France...
All along the way, he had heard nothing but praise.
Praise abroad.
And praise upon returning home.
This past March, a domestic tech account on a social media platform had written an article.
He still remembered the title clearly.
*"The Two New Stars of the Huaxia Mathematical Community: Li Dong and Luo Yu."*
Their two names, placed side by side in the title.
He had clicked on it and read it three times.
In his heart, he had actually agreed with it.
After all, in his eyes, among the entire younger generation in Huaxia, the only one worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as him, Luo Yu, was this Li Dong.
But now?
The Chen Shengshen Prize, which he had never even gotten close to, had today landed in the lap of that twenty-year-old kid.
And that twenty-year-old kid had, just last night at the restaurant entrance, thrown a line in his face.
"Everyone in our group has all their limbs; we’re not short-handed."
Luo Yu ground his back teeth.
The smile on his face was uglier than tears.
Meanwhile, Li Dong just sat in his seat, his mind completely blank.
He hadn’t even fully heard the list of achievements Tian Gang had just read out.
’The Chen Shengshen Prize?’
’Was given to me?’
This was his first time receiving such a major award. Although everyone said the next Fields Medal was already a sure thing for him, he hadn’t actually received it yet, had he?
Besides, for a Huaxia mathematician, the Chen Shengshen Prize held a special meaning.
It was the highest-level award for the Huaxia People, so heavy that one wouldn’t dare to accept it lightly.
While he was still sitting there in a daze, a hand reached over from the side.
Fu Bao Hua laughingly pulled him up from his chair.
"Let’s go, it’s our turn."
Li Dong let himself be pulled along, mechanically walking towards the main stage.
The two of them walked onto the stage and stood before Tian Gang.
Tian Gang glanced at the pair.
One was composed, the other hadn’t yet come back to his senses.
He smiled and handed over the microphone.
"Our two recipients, please share your thoughts."
Fu Bao Hua had originally intended to hand the microphone to Li Dong first.
But when he turned to look, he saw Li Dong’s face was still a bit dazed.
He let out a laugh and simply took it himself.
His speech wasn’t long.
It was roughly about continuing to delve deep into the old problems of Algebraic Geometry and striving to contribute further to Huaxia’s mathematical endeavors...
The applause from the audience was constant.
After Fu Bao Hua finished, he passed the microphone to Li Dong.
By this time, Li Dong had also recovered his wits. He took the microphone and smiled at the audience.
"I genuinely didn’t expect the Chen Shengshen Prize would fall to me."
"Nobody gave me a heads-up beforehand."
A wave of laughter went through the audience.
And the one laughing the hardest was Fu Bao Hua, standing next to Li Dong.
He had known the result since yesterday but didn’t tell Li Dong, wanting to see his reaction to finding out at the last minute.
’Looks like, hehe, this reaction is pretty interesting,’ he thought.
Hearing his laughter, Li Dong shot a sidelong glance at this disrespectful senior brother.
Fu Bao Hua pretended not to see and laughed even more gleefully.
Li Dong couldn’t be bothered with him and continued speaking.
"Brother Fu was very modest just now."
"But I feel that since the Chen Shengshen Prize has fallen to a twenty-year-old upstart like me..."
"...then what it’s looking for is precisely this drive of mine."
"So I won’t waste time on pleasantries."
He took a deep breath and then spoke frankly.
"This is my first trophy for mathematics."
"It is my starting point."
"It is also the one most meaningful to me."
"But it absolutely will not be the last."
Everyone in the audience fell silent.
"Next..."
Li Dong’s pace slowed.
"The Salem Prize."
"The Clay Research Award."
"The Fields Medal."
"The Abel Prize."
"I will take them,"
"one by one, and bring them all back to Huaxia’s hall of mathematics."
As his voice fell,
Li Dong took half a step back and gave a deep, earnest bow to the audience.
Then, applause began to ring out in the hall.
One row, two rows, three rows...
Until it was the entire hall.
This was the loudest round of applause of the day.
This was the drive that belonged to the youth of Huaxia.
And this, too, was the original meaning of the Chen Shengshen Prize.

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