The night before the college entrance exam results were released, I redeemed my Peking University ad

"Hello, Academician Wang, this is Lao Lin. I know it's presumptuous of me to bother you at this hour, but no, it's not urgent, it's very important!"

"Someone is proving Goldbach's Conjecture, yes, that Goldbach's Conjecture. It's not a preprint, it's being shown live. It's being done by an 18-year-old high school student from our country."

"Do I look like I'm joking? I'll send you the link. Take a look at the structure in the third panel, the one about algebraic varieties. I'm a little unsure..."

As Lin Boqian spoke, he dialed another number.

"Hello, Dean Wu, this is Lin Boqian. I have a question in number theory that I'd like you to take a look at..."

Lin Boqian hung up one phone call and then made another.

They kept calling for more people.

"Hello, Director Zheng, this is Lao Lin..."

"Hey, oh, you found out too? What? Aurora's Little Huang is here?"

"Great! Quickly get Xiao Huang to set up a video conference; the live stream is a bit blurry!"

In an instant, all the prominent figures in the Chinese mathematics community were woken up in the middle of the night.

Will a live broadcast prove Goldbach's Conjecture?

What a joke!

But when they opened the live stream and saw the rigorous, advanced, and entirely new derivation process on the blackboard, everyone was stunned.

This is no joke!

It's really proving it!

And the approach is completely correct!

. . .

The chat in the live stream was going crazy:

"I have a master's degree in mathematics from Nanjing University, and to be honest, I can only understand about 20% of it..."

"I'm a PhD from Zhejiang University, and I only understood less than 30% of it... What method is this? I've never seen anything like it before!"

"Wasn't this supposed to be a high school student? This level completely blows my doctoral supervisor away!"

"Who just called it a farce? Come out and apologize! This is going to rewrite the history of mathematics!"

……

Inside the auditorium, Huang Mingyuan's back was completely soaked.

The expressions on his face were also quite interesting, showing shock, fear, joy, and a little regret!

He knew he had done the stupidest thing he had ever done.

He led a group to the door and made things difficult for a peerless genius who could prove Goldbach's Conjecture.

Just then, Director Huang's phone started ringing incessantly.

He ignored it. His eyes were glued to the blackboard, not even for a second.

But the phone kept ringing, stopping and starting, as if everyone in the world was dialing his number at the same time.

"Hello, who is it? We can talk later."

"Oh, Academician Wang, it's you!"

"I'm there, right there!"

"A video conference, right? Great, I'll arrange it right away!"

After hanging up the phone, Huang Mingyuan's legs went weak and he almost collapsed to the ground.

Finished!

Heavens, he's exposed this!

He mechanically turned around and waved to the few Kochi Alliance members behind him who were still in a petrified state.

"Quickly... set up the equipment again, video conference... start the video conference right away."

The young graduate students then seemed to wake up from their daze and hurriedly went to move the equipment that they had already half-packed up.

The high-definition camera was pointed at the blackboards densely covered with mathematical symbols, and the picture was more than ten times clearer than a live stream on a mobile phone.

As soon as the video conference was connected, more than a dozen people joined instantly.

Huang Mingyuan glanced at the list of attendees, and his legs went weak again.

Wang Shouren, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a leading figure in number theory; Lin Boqian, head of the Department of Mathematics at Tsinghua University; Wu Wenyuan, dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences at Zhejiang University; Zhou Jianping, head of the Department of Mathematics at Nanjing University…

They're all big shots, no, giants!

There are three academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Mathematical Sciences alone, and all the heads of mathematics departments from Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, and Southern Zhejiang University are present.

By this time, Ji Bai had already filled seven or eight blackboards with his writing.

"Point the camera at blackboard number one!"

On blackboard number one is the starting point of Ji Bai's proof, the classic framework of the circle method.

"That's strange... The starting move is pretty standard, but his estimated angle on minor arcs is completely different from the classic path."

"Blackboard number two..."

"Old Lin, look at this. He redefined the intervals based on the distribution of the exponent and the prime factors! This construction..."

"Blackboard number three! Look at blackboard number three!"

The camera cuts to blackboard number three.

"He combined the sieve method with the circular method!"

"But this is not the Selberg sieve! The Selberg sieve does not have this structure! This is a completely new variant of the sieve! It redefines the weight function of the sieve!"

There was a full three seconds of silence in the video conference.

The big shots in the dozen or so small windows all gathered in front of the screen, with all sorts of equipment on hand: reading glasses, nearsighted glasses, magnifying glasses.

If this scene were captured and shared online, it would be enough to make netizens laugh for a whole year, but at this moment, no one finds it funny.

"Blackboard number four...algebraic varieties! He introduced an algebraic variety!"

"Blackboard number five! The auxiliary function has been constructed! He used the automorphic form!"

"The choice of this auxiliary function is brilliant; it perfectly binds the weight function of the sieve method to the critical value of the L-function!"

"Blackboard number six! Error term estimation! This upper bound... why is this upper bound so tight?"

"Blackboard number seven..."

"Blackboard number eight..."

"Blackboard number nine..."

When the camera zoomed in on blackboard number nine, the video conference suddenly fell silent.

The nine blackboards are tightly linked together by an invisible chain of logic from beginning to end, without any breaks, jumps, or ambiguous "obvious results".

"The method is feasible!" Academician Wang was the first to break the silence.

"The approach is sound!" said Lin Boqian, head of the Department of Mathematics at Tsinghua University.

Are we about to witness history today?

The big shots were all excited!

But just then, the big shots noticed that Ji Bai had stopped moving.

"Is it stuck?"

"Still not working?"

"Don't disturb him, let him think it over!"

"Even if we can't prove it today, the results of these nine blackboards are enough to shock the world!"

"It's already a miracle to have come this far. It's perfectly normal to be stuck for now. This framework itself is already an achievement that is enough to change the entire direction of number theory research."

……

Viewers in the live stream also expressed their regret:

"Why did you stop writing???"

"Let's go all out!! Let's prove it!!!"

"Don't get stuck here!!! My heart can't take it!!!"

"That's already incredibly impressive! To achieve this at eighteen is unprecedented!"

"That's right! Even if he doesn't finish proving it in the end, Ji Bai is already a god in the world of mathematics! No, a demigod!"

"It's a bit of a pity... but it's okay! Ji Bai is still young! There's plenty of time in the future!"

"It's alright, Ji Bai! Take your time! We'll wait for you!"

……

People in the live chat have already started sending candle emojis, and others are commenting "Even in defeat, there is honor," "A demigod is still a god," and "That's already awesome."

Principal Wang quickly came over and said cautiously, "Ji Bai, don't rush. Take a rest if you're tired. We're not in a hurry."

Ji Bai turned his head, smiled, and shook his aching wrist.

"Old Wang, we don't have enough blackboards."

Principal Wang was taken aback. Only then did he notice that all ten blackboards prepared in the auditorium were now completely filled with writing.

It wasn't that I was stuck, it was that there was nowhere to write!

"I understand, Ji Bai. Don't worry, leave the blackboard problem to me."

After speaking, he turned around and issued the principal's decree to the teachers of No. 99 Middle School:

"Now, immediately, right now, go to each classroom and take down all the blackboards!"

Ji Bai was amused by Principal Wang's shout and waved his hand, saying, "No need for that much, about ten more yuan will be enough."

"Did you hear me? Go and get me ten, no, fifteen blackboards right now!"

The teachers at No. 99 Middle School immediately got to work!

They were all more enthusiastic and excited than the last!

They had a premonition that they were about to witness history!

This is more than just an honor!

If Ji Bai really proves Goldbach's Conjecture at school tonight, then tomorrow morning, the eyes of the whole world will be on him.

Fucheng No. 99 Middle School will be written into the footnotes of every mathematics textbook.

Their salaries and benefits will all be significantly improved!

……