My IQ has been increasing year by year.

In mid-January, Huizhou is unreasonably cold.

The damp cold seeped into the room without any buffer, seeping in through the cracks in the doors and windows.

Outside, the trees were all bare, and the sky was always gloomy.

The final exams officially ended yesterday afternoon.

Winter break has started.

215 Dormitory.

Wang Dayong squatted on the ground, his face flushed red.

In front of him was a huge red and white suitcase.

The suitcase was crammed full of bedding, old clothes, and several boxes of Anhui specialties he bought at the supermarket near the school gate. It looked like it was about to give up at any moment; the zippers were so far apart they couldn't be aligned. "Chen Zhuo, quick, quick, help me weigh it down!"

Da Yong didn't even look up, his hands gripping the zipper tightly, veins bulging on the back of his hands.

Chen Zhuo was standing in front of his desk tidying up when he heard the sound. He put down the book in his hand and walked over.

Without saying much, he knelt on one knee on the huge suitcase and put his entire weight on it.

The air inside the suitcase was squeezed out, and its volume finally shrank.

Da Yong seized the opportunity and pulled hard.

The zipper made a screeching sound as it was zipped up.

"All done!"

Dayong plopped down on the ground, let out a long breath, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"This old suitcase is such a mess every time I pack something. If my mom hadn't insisted that I take this thick quilt back with me, I wouldn't have bothered with all this." Chen Zhuo stood up and patted the dust off his pants.

"If you get this suitcase on the train, there won't even be a place to put it."

Chen Zhuo looked at the enormous thing and gave a very fair assessment.

"It's okay, I bought a standing ticket."

Da Yong waved his hand dismissively.

"Once I get on the bus, I'll just throw this suitcase into the aisle, sit down, and that's it."

Just then, Chu Ge walked in from outside.

He was wearing a heavy black down jacket with the collar turned up, and he was holding a green cardboard train ticket in his hand.

"I'm freezing to death."

While complaining, Chu Ge slammed the dormitory door shut, cutting off the cold wind from the corridor.

"The ticket hall at the train station was packed with people, there wasn't even room to put your feet down. I queued for two hours and finally managed to snag a hard sleeper ticket for 2 AM." He walked over to Dayong's bed and sat down, glancing at the suitcase on the floor.

"Dayong, your gear is pretty good! Are you going to escape famine?"

"You don't know anything, this is called returning home in glory."

Da Yong stood up and kicked the suitcase.

"I was the first person in the village to get into university, and I was even in the University of Science and Technology of China's Junior Class. Shouldn't I bring back a lot of things to prove how awesome I am here?" Chu Ge rolled his eyes, too lazy to pay attention to him, and turned to look at Chen Zhuo.

Chen Zhuo had already returned to his desk.

His luggage was very simple.

A gray suitcase contained a few changes of clothes, with the remaining space reserved for several thick Russian and English textbooks borrowed from the library. "Chen Zhuo, is your ticket for tomorrow?" Chu Ge asked.

"Today's."

As Chen Zhuo spoke, he tidied up the odds and ends on the table.

"The train departs at 3 PM, with two transfers to get back to Zeyang."

There was a knock on the dormitory door twice.

Lu Jia pushed open the door and walked in.

He was dressed rather thinly, with an old jacket over his clothes, and the tip of his nose was a little red from the cold.

He was holding a book on partial differential equations and a few slightly messy pages of draft paper. He didn't seem to be just dropping by; he looked like he was heading to the study room. "Dayong, can I borrow the stapler?" Lu Jia walked over to Wang Dayong's desk. "I messed it up while writing."

Wang Dayong rummaged through the drawer and pulled out a stapler, handing it over.

Lu Jia took it, pressed it twice, and bound the draft paper.

He glanced at Wang Dayong's huge suitcase on the ground, then at Chen Zhuo's suitcase standing by the bed.

"You're leaving this afternoon?"

Lu Jia looked at the luggage on the ground and asked a question.

"Yeah, you're staying here for the New Year after the exams?" Chu Ge looked at Lu Jia. "What day did you buy your ticket? Tickets back to western Sichuan are hard to get." "I'm not going back," Lu Jia said calmly. "I'm staying at school this winter break."

The room fell silent for a moment.

Da Yong was stunned.

"Aren't you going home for the New Year? In this freezing weather, once we have a holiday, everyone leaves, there's not a soul in sight. On New Year's Eve, you'll be alone in the dorm listening to the firecrackers outside. How boring is that?" Dayong was a little confused.

"Isn't your family urging you to go back?"

Upon hearing the word "home," Lu Jia's fingers unconsciously tightened.

He didn't continue Da Yong's words, but instead looked away, lowered his eyes, and stared at the floor beneath his feet.

"I've checked the logistics notice."

Lu Jia's voice was soft, yet it carried an almost stubborn persistence.

"Several small canteens for undergraduates will be closed, but the main canteen of USTC will remain open as usual during the holiday. The dormitory manager also said that on New Year's Eve, the school will hold a New Year's Eve dinner in the main canteen and give free dumpling tickets and red envelopes to students staying on campus."

"I don't want to go back, it's too much trouble."

Lu Jia lowered her eyes and looked at the floor beneath her feet.

"The library's first-floor reading room is open during winter break, which is nice and quiet. I might as well read more books at school."

Chu Ge opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but seeing Lu Jia clutching the book tightly and staring at the ground, Chu Ge paused and swallowed his words. Chen Zhuo turned around and glanced at Lu Jia.

He went to his bed, pulled out a cardboard box containing some loose biscuits, instant noodles, and a few cans of luncheon meat that he had bought over the past few months. Chen Zhuo dragged the box out and pushed it directly to Lu Jia's feet.

"If I leave it in the dorm for the New Year, it'll probably attract a bunch of rats. Since you're staying on campus anyway, could you take some over for me to use up? The food in the cafeteria will probably be so-so during the New Year. It'll be good to have something to eat if I get hungry while studying late at night." Chen Zhuo spoke casually, without saying any unnecessary pleasantries.

Lu Jia looked down at the cardboard box, her shoulders relaxing slightly.

There was no refusal; he simply nodded slightly.

"Okay, thanks."

He picked up the cardboard box, turned around, and went back to apartment 216 across the hall.

The door closed.

Chu Ge sighed.

"This kid lives like an ascetic."

"Everyone has their own path." Chen Zhuo turned back to his desk. "Maybe he feels more at ease at school than at home." The desk was almost completely cleared.

I opened the drawer, and there lay quietly the twenty-odd pages of the Princeton preprint paper.

This document has been here for over a month.

Chen Zhuo took it out and shook off the dust.

Turn to page four.

The question mark drawn with a pencil still lingers next to that bloated and complicated renormalization formula.

Over the past few months, he has broken down the formula in his mind countless times and tried many different paths.

But every time you reach that singularity that leads to infinity, it's like hitting an invisible wall.

It's a dead end.

He didn't get bogged down in the details.

Chen Zhuo plans to put this document in a folder and take it back to Zeyang, where he can read it slowly when he has free time during the Spring Festival.

He reached for a stack of class notes on the corner of the table.

This is a draft he took while auditing an algebraic geometry class this semester, filled with various discrete matrix models and topological diagrams. The moment he picked up the notebook...

A loosely bound sheet of draft paper slipped out from between the pages of the notebook.

Lightly.

It landed right on the fourth page of that Princeton preprint.

The two pieces of paper were stacked together.

The draft paper is a thin, semi-transparent type of paper.

The diagram above is drawn with a black pen, illustrating a step function from discrete algebra.

That's a fault model that's instantly severed at a certain critical point and then starts again from another value.

Through this semi-transparent draft paper.

The formula for continuous calculus from the preprint below was faintly visible.

The singularity that leads to infinity landed right in the center of the step fault on the draft paper.

Chen Zhuo's hand froze in mid-air.

Inside the house, Da Yong was still bragging to Chu Ge about how he was going to cook pork stew with vermicelli when he got home, and Chu Ge was casually chiming in. But Chen Zhuo could no longer hear him.

His gaze was fixed on the two overlapping sheets of paper.

Like two jigsaw puzzle pieces floating in different seas, suddenly, without warning, a gust of wind blew them to the same coordinates. They fit together perfectly.

哢哒.

The machine in my mind, which had been stagnant for more than a month, made a crisp snapping sound at this moment.

The gear is stuck.

If the continuous flow of water is destined to breach the dam.

Then set up an invisible wall of air in front of the dam.

The originally continuous time and space are forcibly shattered into a series of discontinuous discrete points at the moment the singularity approaches. Without continuity, infinity ceases to exist.

That bloated refactoring patch was completely unnecessary.

陈拙

He pulled out a chair and sat down.

He unzipped the pencil case next to him, which he had just closed, and took out his usual pen.

Remove the pen cap.

He found a brand new, large-format draft paper on the table and spread it out.

"Chen Zhuo, what are you doing? Aren't you going to pack your luggage?"

Da Yong turned his head and looked at Chen Zhuo, who had sat down again, with some confusion.

"Wait for me a moment."

Chen Zhuo didn't look up; his gaze was fixed on the paper.

"I've found the tools; I'm going to fix it."

Da Yong scratched his head, not understanding the analogy, but seeing Chen Zhuo's focused expression, he didn't ask any further questions and turned back to check his ticket. Chu Ge, however, noticed something was amiss.

He stood up, walked behind Chen Zhuo, and glanced down at him.

On the draft paper, Chen Zhuo's pen tip moved rapidly.

He did not copy Princeton's original derivation.

He started writing directly from the beginning of the fourth step.

He wrote out a very obscure algebraic geometric matrix.

Then, he neatly crossed out the limit symbol that originally represented continuous integrals.

Instead, a discrete summation symbol is used.

Two steps.

The complex compensation parameters that originally occupied half a page were transformed by this new algebraic transformation, much like impurities encountering strong acid, and began to dissolve and cancel each other out on a large scale. Positive and negative terms mutually consumed each other.

Redundant constants are removed.

That once thorny and cumbersome path was cleaved into a straight shortcut by a cold, hard mathematical axe. There were no obstacles whatsoever.

Five minutes later.

Chen Zhuo wrote down the last line of the equation.

The right side of the equals sign.

The enormous singularity that had been baring its fangs and claws disappeared.

Only one extremely clean and simple constant convergence value remains.

Things will fall into place naturally.

Neat and tidy.

Chen Zhuo put down his pen.

He looked at the dozen or so lines of derivation on the paper.

From the logical starting point to the final result, it fits together seamlessly, without any far-fetched or forced connections.

It was like a sophisticated mechanical clock, stripped of its unnecessary metal frame, revealing only the pure meshing of gears inside. He capped the pen and tossed it onto the table.

He let out a long breath.

"Finished writing?"

Chu Ge watched for a while. He didn't quite understand the specific meaning of the symbols, but he could understand the smoothness in Chen Zhuo's ending. "Finished writing."

Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair.

Chu Ge glanced at his watch.

"It's almost midnight. Let's pack up and get ready to go to the cafeteria for lunch. We should head to the train station too."

Chen Zhuo did not get up to get his suitcase.

He bent down.

He reached under the table to the computer case and touched the power button.

Press down.

The screen flickered and then the Windows XP boot screen appeared.

Chu Ge was stunned.

He looked at the computer that was starting up, and then at Chen Zhuo.

"No, buddy."

Chu Ge pointed to the computer screen.

"We're all leaving soon, why are you turning on your computer now? Are you playing one last round of Minesweeper before we go?"

Da Yong also stopped what he was doing and looked over.

"Send a letter."

Chen Zhuo gripped the mouse and double-clicked to open the network connection on the desktop.

Dial up to connect to the campus network.

"Write a letter? Just go downstairs and mail it," Dayong said.

"This letter can't be mailed from the post office downstairs."

Chu Ge moved a little closer.

He watched as Chen Zhuo placed his hands on the keyboard and began typing on the keycaps.

A crisp knocking sound rang out in the dormitory.

Chen Zhuo did not type Chinese characters.

He typed out lines of English text and formatting instructions.

Chu Ge stared at the screen filled with slashes and curly braces.

"Are you writing code?" Chu Ge asked, somewhat puzzled.

This thing doesn't look like C language or compilation.

"Typesetting language".

Chen Zhuo's eyes were fixed on the screen, his fingers never stopping.

He translated the dozen or so lines of mathematical formulas he had just derived on the draft paper, line by line, into LaTeX code that the machine could recognize. Those originally obscure algebraic and geometric symbols became strings of precise characters under his fingertips.

Fifteen minutes later.

The derivation part has been completely entered.

Chen Zhuo stopped what he was doing, picked up the mouse, and clicked "compile" at the top of the software.

The progress bar flashed by in an instant.

A PDF preview window popped up next to it.

Chu Ge glanced at the PDF.

What was originally a screen full of seemingly random code has been transformed into a neat and clear English document of mathematical formulas, arranged in an orderly fashion, like a printed work of art. The document consists of only two pages.

There's no fluff; the entire document is straight to the point with mathematical derivations.

"You've made this look like a serious academic paper," Chu Ge choked back a couple of coughs. "Who are you even sending it to?"

Chen Zhuo did not reply.

I entered the URL of my USTC campus network email address.

Click to write a letter.

In the recipient section, Chen Zhuo picked up the Princeton preprint that was next to him.

Turn to the first page.

Below the title is a row of the author's names.

Chen Zhuo looked at the address and typed the same characters on the keyboard.

Chu Ge stared at the email address suffix, his eyes slowly widening.

"Princeton?"

Chu Ge glanced at the computer screen, then looked down at the English document on Chen Zhuo's desk.

He suddenly connected the two things in his mind.

"I..."

Chu Ge lowered his voice and looked at Chen Zhuo as if he were a monster.

"Don't tell me you've been staring at this paper every day for the past two weeks, looking for faults? Are you going to send the faults you found to the professor now?" Chen Zhuo placed his hands on the keyboard.

He smiled, his tone gentle.

"It's not about finding fault."

Chen Zhuo stared at the blank text area on the screen.

"When they were building the road, they encountered a large rock and decided to build a long overpass instead. I just wrote to them to tell them that the rock could actually be blown up." Chu Ge swallowed.

Looking at Chen Zhuo, he suddenly felt that this usually mild-mannered classmate inexplicably possessed an extremely cold arrogance.

But he acted as if it were perfectly natural.

Chen Zhuo began writing the email body.

There was no need for those fancy small talk.

This is a very formal academic email.

Chu Ge was good at English. He stood at the back and silently translated the English that Chen Zhuo had typed out in his mind.

Dear Professor Demian:

I read your recent preprint on arXiv about the boundaries of multidimensional topological manifolds, and the vision in this paper is admirable. However, when I reached the derivation of singularity elimination in Part Four, I found that the renormalization process might introduce additional computational redundancy. I attempted to introduce a partitioning method based on discrete algebraic geometry; the detailed derivation is attached.

In the nested fourth step, if this substitution is used, the singularity can be naturally canceled out at the algebraic level, thus skipping the renormalization step. Hopefully, this rudimentary derivation will be helpful to your research.

The email body was very brief.

The wording was proper and plain, without a trace of boasting; it was entirely the attitude of a junior discussing academic matters.

At last.

Chen Zhuo pressed the Enter key and typed a few words at the end.

Chen Zhuo.

China University of Science and Technology.

He did not write that he was a freshman.

In the academic world, only right and wrong matters, not age.

Writing "grade level" makes it seem like you're trying to gain sympathy or deliberately putting on airs.

Chen Zhuo clicked to add an attachment.

I uploaded the two-page PDF file that I just generated.

Chen Zhuo gripped the mouse and moved the cursor to the send button in the upper left corner of the screen.

Without hesitation, he lightly tapped his index finger.

A blue progress bar appeared at the top of the webpage.

Two seconds later, the page redirected.

A line of text appeared in the center of the screen:

Email sent successfully.

Chen Zhuo loosened the mouse.

He leaned back in his chair and stretched languidly.

It was as if I had just completed a trivial homework assignment.

"Alright." Chen Zhuo stood up.

He bent down and pressed the power button on the computer case.

The system is shutting down.

The screen went dark.

Chen Zhuo unplugged the main socket on the wall.

I put the Princeton preprint on the table, my notes, and the few sheets of draft paper filled with derivations into a file folder. I unzipped the suitcase and neatly pressed the file folder down at the bottom.

Then put in a few sweaters.

Zip up the zipper.

Chu Ge watched for a long time before finally coming to his senses.

"You just sent it like that?" Chu Ge asked incredulously. "What if you miscalculated? What if the other party doesn't even look at it?" "If I miscalculated, I'll just treat it as a joke. I won't lose anything if the other party doesn't look at it."

Chen Zhuo pulled out the handle of the canvas box.

He picked up his slightly worn backpack and slung it over his shoulder.

"Academic exchanges aren't like signing a death warrant, so let it be."

By this time, Da Yong had already pulled up the huge suitcase and was carrying a thermos full of hot water.

"Let's go, let's go! Forget about Princeton or whatever, we'll miss the bus if we don't hurry!" Dayong urged.

Chu Ge also slung his backpack over his shoulder and zipped his down jacket all the way up.

The three people walked out of dormitory 215.

Chen Zhuo walked last, reached out and grasped the doorknob, then pulled it out.

"Bang."

Close the door and lock it.

"Let's go."

Chen Zhuo dragged his suitcase.

In the corridor.

The dormitory supervisor was carrying a large megaphone and walking all the way from the other end of the corridor.

"Everyone in the dorms, make sure to turn off the power when you leave! Close the windows tightly! Take your trash with you! Don't leave it to get moldy by the New Year!"

Chen Zhuo, Da Yong, and Chu Ge walked down the stairs together with the crowded flow of people.

Stepping out of the dormitory building, the chilly afternoon wind of Huizhou hit me in the face.

The main road in front of the school was filled with taxis and tricycles soliciting passengers, and students were carrying large and small bags.

Chen Zhuo mingled in the crowd.

He looked up at the gray sky.

The green train will depart promptly at 3 p.m. this afternoon.

It will wobble and stagger across the plains and farmland.

In the soft light of tomorrow morning, I will take him back to that familiar yet distant Zeyang City.

That place was always filled with the atmosphere of the marketplace, the aroma of egg pancakes, and Zhang Qiang's loud and boisterous voice.

The Chinese New Year is approaching.