My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 436 The Paper of St. Petersburg

In St. Petersburg, it gets light very early in May.

The morning light slowly crept down from the exterior walls of the old building, its color pale, unlike springtime, more like a layer of dust that hadn't been wiped clean.

The heating in the corridor had been turned off, the iron pipes had cooled down, and the corners of the walls still smelled of winter dampness. When someone pushed the door open, the hinges would make a sound that lingered in the empty corridor.

When Perelman arrived, there weren't many people in the building yet.

He walked through the lobby on the first floor and went up the stairs, carrying a few old papers in his hand. Several lecture notices were pasted at the corner of the stairs, one of which had its corner rolled up and was gently trembling in the wind that was seeping in through the window cracks.

He didn't look.

At the end of the second-floor corridor, there is a small office.

The table was small, the bookshelf was against the wall, an old chair was placed by the window, there was a glass on the window that was empty, and several printed emails were pressed on the corner of the table.

Madrid.

General Assembly.

invite.

Itinerary confirmed.

There was another letter, carefully worded, as if the writer was trying to avoid things he didn't want to touch.

These papers arrived a long time ago.

It had already been seen long ago.

There was no reply.

Perelman put the old papers on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. He didn't turn on the computer or touch the emails.

A tram passed by outside the window, its sound coming from afar and becoming very low through the glass. He opened an old lecture note, read a few lines, then stopped and wrote a short symbol on the edge of the paper.

After a while, footsteps could be heard in the corridor.

The footsteps stopped at the door.

Someone knocked on the door twice.

Perelman did not speak.

The door was still pushed open a crack.

The person who came in was an old colleague from the building. His hair was already a bit gray. He was holding a freshly printed sheet of paper, which still had the slightly curled edges that came out of the printer. A long black clip was attached to the top of the paper.

My old colleague stood at the door and glanced at the lecture notes on his desk.

"Did you see it?"

Perelman did not look up.

"What?"

My old colleague handed the paper forward a little.

"Newly released."

Perelman did not answer.

There's too much paper like this.

It happens every year.

Some people prove this, some people solve that; the topics are written very broadly, the abstracts are very full, but in the end, most of them will just slowly turn yellow in some drawer.

His old colleague seemed to know what he was thinking, and without putting the paper down, he simply said:

"Hodge".

Perelman's pen never stopped.

"Many people write about Hodge."

"This time is different."

Perelman still did not reach out.

My old colleague put the paper on the table.

"That Chinese boy at Princeton."

The pen paused for a moment.

It stopped very briefly.

It was so short that it would be almost unnoticed unless someone standing at the door was watching it.

Perelman finally raised his head.

My former colleague said:

"Chen Zhuo".

The room was quiet for a while.

The sound of the tram outside the window had faded into the distance, and someone downstairs closed a door, causing the windowpane to rattle slightly.

Perelman looked at the paper, without asking the age or where the information came from.

He reached out and took the paper.

The first page is very clean.

The title is written above.

The following is the author's biography.

No further words were needed.

Perelman glanced at it and then turned the page.

My old colleague didn't leave.

He leaned against the door, as if to see if Perelman would put the paper down immediately.

Perelman did not give up.

He skipped the parts that would most easily excite outsiders.

Sentences you'd like even if you didn't read the news.

Ignoring the weight of the question.

They also didn't look at the author's age, which was repeatedly mentioned by others later on.

He read on from the introduction.

Page 1 past.

Page two has passed.

By the third page, he was turning the pages more slowly.

An old colleague asked:

"What's wrong?"

Perelman did not answer.

His finger hovered next to a line on the paper, looked at it for a while, and then turned the page.

Not surprised.

It's not that I agree.

It's just that the person who was originally going to sweep over quickly suddenly realized that the ground under their feet was not ordinary, so they had to look down and pause.

His old colleague stood there for a while, and seeing that he didn't say anything, he left.

The door closed gently.

The only sound in the office was the rustling of pages turning.

Halfway through the morning, voices gradually filled the corridor. The door to the next office opened and closed, and someone carrying a cup passed by the door. The footsteps slowed down slightly in front of Perelman's door before continuing to walk away.

Perelman did not go out.

At noon, someone came to call him for lunch.

When the door was pushed open, he was turning back two pages of the preprint.

The visitor saw the paper on the table, but without asking any further questions, simply said:

"There's soup downstairs."

Perelman said:

"You go first."

The door closed again.

Those emails from Madrid were still buried under the old lecture notes, with only a small section of the white border showing.

Chen Zhuo's preprint was laid out in the center of the table.

In the afternoon, the sky became overcast for a while.

The light in St. Petersburg grew even grayer, casting shadows of bookshelves and table edges on the windowpanes. Perelman stood up, poured himself a glass of water, and sat back down. When he put the glass down, the bottom of it touched the table with a soft sound.

He doesn't read very fast.

Sometimes he would pause on one page for a long time, and sometimes he would flip through several pages in a row. When he got to a certain point, he would go back two pages and then flatten the paper.

He didn't frown.

He didn't nod.

The more I looked, the quieter it became.

As evening approached, fewer and fewer people remained in the building.

When the corridor light came on, it wasn't completely dark outside the window. My old colleague came back from outside and passed by his door. He saw light coming from the crack in the door and stopped for a moment.

He didn't go in.

You can see the corner of the table through the crack in the door.

The Hodge preprint is still there.

The emails from Madrid are still in the same place.

My old colleague stood there for a few seconds, then turned and left.

Perelman left after it had completely darkened.

He carefully put away the old lecture notes and glanced at the emails on the corner of the table.

I didn't take it.

There was no reply.

Finally, he closed Chen Zhuo's preprint, tucked it into an old folder, and took it with him.

The next morning, my old colleague arrived a little earlier than usual.

As he walked down the second-floor corridor, he saw that the door to Perelman's office was already open.

The lights were off inside.

The morning light shone in through the window and fell on the table.

Perelman sat at the table.

The Hodge preprint from yesterday is still open.

There were a few more sheets of paper next to it.

Some were blank sheets of paper with short markings on them; others looked like they had been torn from old notebooks, with uneven edges. The preprints were flipped to the back, with a pencil pressed against the edge of the paper.

An old colleague knocked on the door frame.

Do you have any of Chen Zhuo's previous articles?

The old colleague was stunned for a moment.

"The old ones?"

Perelman flipped back a few pages of the preprint to the bibliography.

His finger hovered over a few of the lines.

Those questions were familiar to my old colleagues.

constant.

The entire Hodgkin scratch.

Discrete structure.

Regular functions.

These things weren't unseen by anyone in the past few years.

The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton had already caused quite a stir because of Chen Zhuo.

News travels very slowly in the mathematics community, but it can also travel very quickly, especially the article published in the "Annals of Mathematics," which many people have heard of even if they haven't read it carefully.

Having heard of it is one thing.

Putting them together with the Hodge certificate in front of you is another matter entirely.

The old colleague walked to the table, looked closely, and said:

"I think I have the paper on constants saved, as well as the one in the yearbook, and another one about discrete structures and normal functions. I need to find it."

He paused for a moment.

Which one do you want?

Perelman said:

"all."

His old colleague looked at him.

When he handed me this preprint yesterday, he just wanted to ask: Do you want to see it?

He didn't expect that the next morning, Perelman would no longer need the Hodge testimonies.

It contains all of Chen Zhuo's previous articles.

An old colleague asked:

"Now?"

Perelman did not answer the question.

He removed his hand from the references and turned back to the first page of the Hodge preprint.

"In chronological order"

The room fell silent.

This sentence was spoken very softly.

But the old colleague, standing by the table, suddenly felt that something had changed position.

The emails from Madrid were still buried under the old lecture notes.

It was not opened.

No reply was received.

It wasn't moved to the center of the desktop either.

In the center of the table was only Chen Zhuo's preprint.

The old colleague glanced at the emails, then at the paper in Perelman's hand, and finally nodded.

"I'll go find it."