Chapter 189 - 141: The Toughest Problem
Watching Shen Yan’s adorable, determined nod, Yunqing couldn’t help but sigh, her voice tinged with helplessness. "Ah, I just wish I wasn’t such a dunce when it comes to science and engineering. If I weren’t, I could at least help you shoulder some of this."
Chen Lin, who had overheard, smiled and swallowed a mouthful of food. "Don’t think that way. You’re already a huge help just by assisting Assistant Huang with keeping that whole mountain of administrative and legal minutiae in perfect order."
"And that’s not even counting how you take care of our lunches every day. If this company is going to grow and thrive, your contributions are indispensable."
And while his words were playfully exaggerated, the sincerity in his tone was genuine.
Yunqing’s heart swelled with delight. A huge, dazzlingly bright smile bloomed across her face.
She waved a hand, feigning a magnanimous air. "You bet! Don’t you worry, Boss. While Yanyan is working overtime, I’ll take care of everyone’s dinner!"
Just then, Shen Yan, who had been eating in silence, finally swallowed her last mouthful of rice.
She set down her chopsticks, dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin, and then looked up. A glint of light flashed in her clear eyes as she looked at them and said, "I’ve made some progress over the last couple of days. I might be able to finish translating the problem by Friday."
"Really?" Chen Lin’s eyes lit up, and a surge of joy washed over him.
He hadn’t told Shen Yan about the plan with Principal Chang Kai and Dean Zhuang, afraid it would put too much pressure on her. Deep down, however, he truly hoped she would deliver results soon.
He had checked the system interface yesterday.
On the panel for his "Little Financial Planner" title, Yanhai Company’s valuation had dropped from 150 million to 140 million.
A full ten million in valuation had simply evaporated!
Based on his equity stake, 46% of the company’s valuation was directly factored into his personal net worth.
That ten-million-dollar drop meant that 4.6 million had vanished from his personal assets!
While that loss was hardly devastating compared to his total net worth of over eighty million, it proved that the Official Account article, and the storm of controversy it had kicked up, were already having a tangible impact.
In that moment, Chen Lin finally understood why the legal departments of major corporations so tirelessly sent cease and desist letters to every online outlet that published negative stories about them.
Even without a "Little Financial Planner" title like his, the falling stock prices and damage to their reputation from every bout of negative press represented a deeply painful financial loss for those major shareholders!
At this point, dispelling the doubts about his mathematical abilities was no longer just about his reputation; it was about protecting his wallet.
After all, the company’s market value was directly tied to the monthly returns calculated by his "Little Financial Planner" title!
...
「October 16th. Thursday, 9:00 AM.」
Chen Lin walked into the office carrying breakfast.
He scanned the room and saw that Sun Yu, Yunqing, and Huang Yiyi were all there, busy at their desks. But the desk diagonally opposite his, Shen Yan’s, was empty.
Chen Lin’s heart sank. ’Don’t tell me she worked so much overtime these past two days that she’s completely collapsed,’ was his first thought.
He set down the breakfast and was just about to pull out his phone to send Shen Yan a WeChat message when his eyes were drawn to a stack of A4 paper on his desk.
It was a thick stack, with a small, sky-blue sticky note placed on top.
Chen Lin walked over and picked up the note.
It was covered in Shen Yan’s handwriting:
"The problem is fully translated. I had a sudden burst of inspiration after I got home last night, so I stayed up and finished it. I can understand the problem now, but I have absolutely no idea how to solve it. I hope you can crack it. I’m exhausted from the last couple of days, so I’m going to my dorm to catch up on sleep. I won’t be in the office on Thursday or Friday."
An indescribable wave of surprise and gratitude washed over Chen Lin as he finished reading the note.
He picked up the stack of A4 paper and quickly began to flip through it.
On the pages, the once-obscure descriptions, filled with jargon from materials science and Physics, had been unraveled and rebuilt by Shen Yan in the pure language of mathematics.
The entire problem was now clear and intuitive, completely free of any cross-disciplinary barriers to comprehension.
Chen Lin took a deep breath, immediately pulled out his phone, and sent Shen Yan a short message on WeChat: "Got it. Get some rest."
With that done, he wasted no time. He pulled a pen from its holder, grabbed a stack of scratch paper, set Shen Yan’s translated problem before him, and instantly sank into a state of deep, unwavering concentration.
’Since I can understand this problem effortlessly with the power of my "Little Mathematician" title, that means Shen Yan’s translation of it is perfect!’
’Now, all I have to do is solve it—as fast as possible!’
Chen Lin’s expression grew calm and his gaze deepened. In his mind, seemingly unrelated mathematical axioms, lemmas, and theorems began to connect and reassemble at lightning speed.
He put pen to paper, transcribing the fully-formed calculations from his mind onto the scratch paper with the grace of flowing water.
The tip of his pen met the paper, creating a rhythmic SCRITCH, SCRATCH.
Chen Lin wrote at an incredible speed, complex and intricate mathematical symbols and formulas flowing from his pen.
From using the Lax-Milgram theorem and fixed-point theory to prove the existence of a unique weak solution for the complex variational inequality in a hyperbolic Sobolev space...
...to cleverly constructing an auxiliary function and, in combination with the Moser iteration technique, providing a Hölder regularity estimate for the solution on the fractal boundary...
...and finally, to introducing a penalty term dependent on the material parameter εc and using the theory of Γ-convergence to rigorously prove that as εc approaches zero, the model stably converges to classic elastoplasticity theory...
Step by step, the logical chain was seamless, the proof process unassailable.
SWOOSH—
With the final stroke of his pen, Chen Lin let out a long breath, pulling himself out of his state of placid concentration.
He glanced at the time in the bottom-right corner of his computer screen: 9:50 AM.
’It actually took me more than forty-five minutes?’
Even he was a little surprised.
This problem was truly a tough nut to crack, one that an industry-leading company had a team researching for three years. In terms of complexity, it was definitely one of the most difficult challenges he had faced since getting his "Little Mathematician" title, nearly on par with the clinical trial problem he’d solved for Huanrun Pharmaceutical.
He organized the sheets of scratch paper covered in his derivations, took out his phone, and photographed them one by one. Then, on his computer, he compiled the images into a compressed file and sent it directly to Professor Lu Zhongqi’s email address.
The subject line was concise: "Solution to the Mathematical Problem for the Solid-State Battery Project."
He figured it would take Professor Lu and the team at the Science and Technology University at least a few days to see the email, assemble a team, and verify the solution, so he didn’t expect a quick response.
He stretched, put the matter out of his mind for the time being, and put on his headphones. Pulling up the code for the large-scale AI model he’d been writing, he resumed his self-study.