Chapter 324 - 177: A Letter of Challenge

Chapter 324: Chapter 177: A Letter of Challenge

「Half a month later.」

An office in the Mathematics Building.

In the corner, an old HP laser printer was working nonstop. The white sheets in the input tray dwindled one by one as the output slot spat out page after page of A4 paper.

The window was half-open, but it couldn’t air out the strong smell of coffee. The trash can was overflowing with empty instant coffee packets and crumpled-up draft papers.

With a soft CLICK, the printer stopped running.

The last sheet of paper was ejected.

Wu Tao stood by the printer.

Heavy, dark circles ringed his eyes, which were webbed with fine red veins. He hadn’t shaved in some time, and his entire person radiated an air of being completely drained.

He reached out and picked up the thick stack of paper from the output tray.

Forty pages in total.

The final draft of a mathematics paper, all in English.

Wu Tao walked over to the desk, gripped the edges of the stack with both hands, and gently tapped them on the flat surface of the desk a few times.

The sound of the paper edges aligning was exceptionally crisp in the quiet office.

His movements were slow and steady.

For the past half-month, he had barely returned to his dorm.

Aside from eating and taking short naps, he had spent all his time in this office.

The homology group mapping Chen Zhuo had left on the blackboard that night was just a key. Wu Tao had taken that key, consulted hundreds of papers, and filled in every homological algebra transformation, every boundary condition constraint, line by line, to forge this forty-page, watertight logical loop.

Li Jianming sat in the wicker chair opposite him, a teacup in hand.

Li Jianming watched Wu Tao align the papers without saying a word.

He could see that beyond the exhaustion in his student’s eyes, there was a newfound confidence—the kind forged only by pushing past one’s absolute limits.

"Professor, it’s printed."

Wu Tao placed the aligned final draft on Li Jianming’s desk, then grabbed a black binder clip from the corner of the desk, pried it open with effort, and securely fastened the forty pages together.

Li Jianming set down his teacup, his gaze falling upon the thick final draft.

"Go wash your face first."

Li Jianming’s voice was a bit hoarse.

"Wait for Chen Zhuo to get here. Once he’s looked it over, we’ll submit it."

Wu Tao nodded without a word and walked out of the office.

The sound of a faucet being turned on came from the hallway, followed by the splashes of cold water on a face.

Not long after, footsteps echoed from the other end of the hallway.

The office door was pushed open.

Chen Zhuo walked in.

"Teacher Li."

Chen Zhuo entered and greeted him naturally.

Wu Tao, wiping his face with a paper towel, walked back in just then. Seeing Chen Zhuo, he casually pulled over a chair.

"You’re here. Sit."

Wu Tao’s voice was thick and nasal.

Li Jianming pushed the clipped, forty-page final draft in front of Chen Zhuo.

"Wu Tao just finished printing it," Li Jianming said.

"Give it a look."

Chen Zhuo pulled out the chair and sat down.

He didn’t refuse or offer any polite pleasantries. He simply reached out, pulled the draft toward him, and opened it to the first page.

The office instantly fell silent.

Only the RUSTLE of flipping pages could be heard.

Li Jianming picked up his teacup again and drank his tea in a slow, deliberate manner.

Wu Tao leaned back on the nearby sofa, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were half-closed, but his ears were keenly attuned to the rhythm of Chen Zhuo’s page-turning.

Chen Zhuo read with intense focus.

He wasn’t just skimming ten lines at a glance; he was following Wu Tao’s deductive logic, reading line by line.

He turned the pages quickly when it came to routine lemma citations, but his gaze would linger for a few extra seconds on core matrix transformations.

Time ticked by, second by second, minute by minute.

Ten minutes.

Twenty minutes.

When he reached the third Chapter, Chen Zhuo’s page-turning stopped.

This was the toughest nut to crack in the entire paper.

The leap from discrete network nodes to the fiber bundle expansion in topological space was not a simple matter of plugging in formulas; it required immense spatial imagination and rigorous logical connection.

Chen Zhuo’s gaze stopped on the second section of the third Chapter.

His eyes slowly traced the long lines of derivations. After finishing one page, he turned it over and continued to the next.

He read for a full five minutes.

Leaning on the sofa, Wu Tao’s half-closed eyes were now wide open. He unconsciously gripped the edge of the sofa, his breathing much lighter than before.

He had spent three sleepless nights writing those few pages.

He had scrapped his work twice before, on the final attempt, finally feeling that he had truly stitched the boundary between the continuous and discrete domains together seamlessly.

You can’t fake it in mathematics.

Either it works or it doesn’t. In this room, Chen Zhuo was the one who could see through to the truth at a glance.

Chen Zhuo finished reading the section.

He didn’t immediately turn the page. Instead, he gently smoothed the sheet flat.

Then, he lifted his head, his gaze shifting from the draft to Wu Tao on the sofa.

Chen Zhuo’s eyes were clear, with no trace of condescending scrutiny or deliberate fault-finding.

"Senior Brother Wu."

Chen Zhuo spoke, his tone gentle and filled with sincere admiration.

"This section in Chapter Three on the fiber bundle’s expansion and transition... it’s beautifully written."

Chen Zhuo pointed to the manuscript in front of him.

"The framework I had in my head that night was actually a bit rough in its handling of the boundary conditions. This adjoint functor mapping you added has completely welded the entire logical chain shut."

Chen Zhuo looked at Wu Tao with a faint smile, the kind of delight one feels after seeing a piece of exquisite craftsmanship.