My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 271 Don't they ever sleep?

Chen Zhuo jogged slowly along the edge of the street.

Turning the corner, Pierre's two-story house came into view. The lawn in the yard had just been mowed, and there was still a faint smell of grass in the air.

Chen Zhuo walked up the steps along the stone path and pushed open the door.

The air conditioner in the house is always on, and the temperature is a few degrees higher than outside.

The faint bubbling of a coffee machine came from the kitchen, along with the aroma of butter melting in a frying pan.

Matilda was standing in front of the island counter, holding a spatula, spreading jam on two slices of freshly toasted bread.

She turned her head when she heard the door open.

"Finished running?"

Matilda glanced at the sweat on Chen Zhuo's forehead.

"Yeah, I just finished running."

Chen Zhuo changed out of his running shoes and threw the brown paper bag in his hand into the trash can by the door.

"Go upstairs, take a shower, and change your clothes. Don't catch a cold from the wind."

Matilda placed the toast with jam onto her plate.

Breakfast will be ready soon.

"it is good."

Chen Zhuo walked up the stairs, pushed open his bedroom door, took off his sweat-soaked tracksuit, and casually threw it into the laundry basket behind the door.

The sound of running water soon filled the bathroom.

The water temperature was just right, and after rinsing for about ten minutes, the sound of the water flow stopped.

Chen Zhuo walked out, drying his hair.

He unzipped the wardrobe, revealing several similar dark-colored clothes hanging inside. He casually grabbed a sweatshirt and put it on, then slipped on a pair of loose jeans.

His Nokia phone was on the desk.

Chen Zhuo walked over, picked up his phone, and pressed the middle button.

The screen lit up, and it was completely clean; there were no missed calls or new text messages.

Well, I'm all alone.

He put his phone in his pocket, draped a towel over the back of the chair, turned around, opened the door, and went downstairs.

Pierre was already seated in the restaurant on the first floor.

In front of Pierre was a cup of the same old black tea, no longer steaming. He wore his reading glasses and held a stack of bound papers in his hand.

Chen Zhuo walked over, pulled out the chair opposite Pierre, and sat down.

Matilda came out of the kitchen carrying two plates.

One plate was placed next to Pierre, and the other was placed in front of Chen Zhuo. On the plate were two slices of toasted fruit jam and an egg fried until the edges were slightly charred.

Then, she took a white mug, poured a cup of hot milk for Chen Zhuo, and placed it next to the plate.

"Thank you, Madam."

Chen Zhuo picked up the cup.

Matilda smiled and turned to go back to the kitchen.

Chen Zhuo took a sip of hot milk, which flowed down his esophagus into his stomach, dispelling the lingering chill from his shower.

Pierre placed the stack of papers on the table, then touched the edge of the papers with his finger and slid them down the tablecloth to Chen Zhuo's hand.

Chen Zhuo put down his cup and glanced down at it.

The top page contains the title of the paper, entirely in English, in a large font size, followed by the abstract.

"It was done by people from Harvard."

Pierre picked up the now-cold coffee and took a sip.

"It was uploaded to arXiv at 4 a.m. today."

Chen Zhuo did not speak immediately.

He picked up the knife and fork on the table, cut a small piece of fried egg and put it in his mouth. The edges of the fried egg were crispy, and the yolk in the middle was just set.

After swallowing, he reached out and picked up the stack of papers.

He didn't look at the preceding summary and the complicated derivation process.

I flipped directly to the last page, my eyes scanning the upload time at the bottom of the page and the long list of names.

The upload time was indeed 4:16 AM.

The four names that were signed were unfamiliar, but according to the prefixes, they were all postdoctoral fellows in the Harvard Mathematics Department.

Chen Zhuo put the stack of papers back on the table.

"Four o'clock in the morning."

Chen Zhuo picked up half a slice of toast.

"Don't these guys ever sleep?"

His tone was very calm.

There was no surprise, no anger, just a slight bewilderment.

He went to bed at 10 p.m. last night and got up at 6 a.m. this morning to go for a run.

Upon seeing this time, his first reaction was that this group of people had a really terrible work-rest schedule.

Pierre leaned back in his chair, looking at the young man opposite him.

"They extracted the grid tool you wrote in the seminar last month."

Pierre reached out and tapped the stack of papers.

"It directly fits into that derivative conjecture in algebraic geometry, and conveniently fills in that gap."

It was a small conjecture that had been unresolved for several years, and no one had touched it because the amount of calculation was too large and there were no suitable tools.

Chen Zhuo took a bite of the toast; the jam was blueberry flavored and slightly sweet.

"Don't you feel like you've lost out when someone else uses your paper to publish it?"

Pierre looked at Chen Zhuo, his tone carrying a hint of probing.

After finishing the bread in his mouth, Chen Zhuo took a tissue and wiped his fingers.

"What is this?"

He picked up the cup and took another sip of milk.

Pierre raised an eyebrow.

"I just glanced at that derivative conjecture, and it really is a physically demanding task."

Chen Zhuo put down the paper cup and leaned back in his chair.

"It's full of very tedious basic calculations. If we don't solve it, we'll have to take time to calculate these side problems while we're working on the main storyline."

Chen Zhuo looked at the stack of papers on the table.

"Now someone is willing to stay up until four in the morning to clean up all the pebbles on the roadside for us for free, and also to verify the stability of this tool in the field of algebraic geometry."

He looked at Pierre and smiled.

"They traded this paper for a professorship at Harvard, saving us months of tedious calculations. It was a pretty good deal."

Pierre looked at Chen Zhuo's calm face.

He stared at it for a few seconds. Then, the old man shook his head and couldn't help but chuckle.

"You lazy bum."

Pierre cursed.

Chen Zhuo did not refute, and he lowered his head to continue eating the remaining fried eggs on his plate.

Matilda came out of the kitchen with a rag in her hand and began wiping the water stains on the island next to her.

"However, they were in a bit of a rush."

Pierre reached out and flipped to the middle page of the stack of papers, pointing to a line of formulas on it.

Chen Zhuo leaned forward slightly.

Look here.

Pierre's finger touched an integral symbol.

"In order to upload the preprint before others, they did a very rough approximation here. Although the result is fine, the process is too awkward."

Chen Zhuo glanced at it.

"If they were given another week, they would definitely be able to handle things much more smoothly here," Chen Zhuo said.

"But they dare not wait."

Pierre closed the paper.

"That's how academia works. If you wait even a day, the paper might be attributed to those guys from MIT or Stanford."

"I understand."

Chen Zhuo picked up the last half of the toast.

Breakfast was eaten relatively quickly.

A dozen minutes later, Chen Zhuo had finished all the food on his plate, and the milk in his mug was also gone.

He stood up, stacked his empty plates and cups together, and carried them, along with the empty teacup in front of Pierre, to the kitchen sink.

Matilda turned on the tap.

"Go ahead and do your work, I'll take care of the washing," Matilda said.

"Thank you, Madam."

Chen Zhuo took a kitchen paper towel and wiped the water droplets that had splashed onto his hands.

He walked back to the restaurant, where Pierre had already stood up from his chair.

The old man walked to the coat rack in the entryway, took down the dark khaki autumn trench coat, put it on, and then picked up the car keys from the side table.

Chen Zhuo also walked to the entrance hall, without taking any books, only a black backpack, which he carried on one shoulder.

A folding umbrella was hanging on a hook behind the door. Chen Zhuo glanced at the weather outside. Although it wasn't raining, he still took the umbrella down and stuffed it into the mesh pocket on the side of his backpack.

Pierre put the car keys in his pocket and stood by the door waiting for him.

"Those guys from Harvard helped us clear all the weeds around the perimeter."

Chen Zhuo lowered his head, tightened the shoelace on his left foot, and began to speak.

The tone was very casual, as if he were just saying what he was going to eat for breakfast tomorrow.

"We'll have to handle the rest of the central area ourselves."

Pierre nodded.

"Yesterday afternoon's derivation got stuck on the boundary problem of the overall loop."

Pierre looked at the back of Chen Zhuo's head.

"There are too many singularities in the middle, and the structure can never find a balance. As soon as data is plugged in, the edges are prone to collapse."

Chen Zhuo stepped into his right shoe.

He continued to tie his shoelaces with his head down.

"I met someone in an alley behind Nassau Street when I was jogging this morning."

Chen Zhuo's voice came from below.

Pierre did not interrupt him.

"He was loading cardboard boxes onto the car. The boxes were on the damp ground, and the chassis had absorbed water and become soft."

Chen Zhuo wrapped the shoelace of his right shoe around once.

"He stuffed several heavy cans of soybeans directly into the middle of the cardboard box."

"and then?"

"The bottom of the box broke, and all the cans were smashed on the ground."

Chen Zhuo tightened the shoelace on his right foot and tied it into a sturdy bow.

He stood up from the shoe-changing bench.

He turned around and looked at Pierre.

"The middle structure got damp and became very fragile. If you concentrate the pressure in the center at this time, the box will definitely fall apart."

Chen Zhuo simply gestured a rectangle in mid-air with his hand.

"So I helped him repack it. I separated all the heavy tin cans and secured them to the four corners of the cardboard box."

He pointed to four dots in the air.

"The four corners are rigid structures with supports, which put the weight on the edges, and then you stuff the lighter bread and flour in the middle, so the box is stable."

The entryway fell silent for a moment.

There were no car horns, and no running water from the kitchen.

Chen Zhuo lowered his hand and looked at the old man in front of him.

"Teacher, our model has also gotten damp."

Chen Zhuo's tone was calm.

"Yesterday we were trying to balance those complex singularity equations in the very center of the manifold, which is the most vulnerable place."

He looked into Pierre's eyes.

"Since the middle can't hold on, let's just ignore the middle."

Chen Zhuo pointed in the direction outside the door.

"Extract those discrete nodes, attach them to the four boundaries, fix them in place, and let the boundaries bear the load."

He paused.

"Once the boundary is secured, the higher-dimensional parts in the middle will naturally stabilize."

Pierre stood still.

His hand was already on the doorknob, ready to push the door open.

Upon hearing Chen Zhuo's last few words, his hand froze in mid-air.

Pierre did not speak.

His brain started working at lightning speed in that instant.

There was no blackboard, no visual sketches, but for an old man who had studied topology and algebraic geometry for decades, the cardboard box model described by Chen Zhuo was instantly transformed into a rigorous mathematical structure in his mind.

boundary.

Discrete nodes.

Fixed force.

Pierre's breathing became somewhat heavy.

He didn't express any surprise, nor did he praise how ingenious the idea was.

He simply tightened his grip on the doorknob.

"Click".

The sound of the door lock turning echoed in the quiet entryway.

Pierre pushed down hard and opened the door.

The early autumn morning sunlight streamed through the open door, casting large swaths onto the dark red carpet in the entryway.

A cool breeze, carrying a hint of the scent of fallen leaves, wafted in.

"Let's go to the office."