Chapter 205 - 153: Last-Minute Sharpening
At Professor Qiu Chengtong’s praise, Chen Lin quickly stood up and once again bowed solemnly to the respected titan of academia.
"Thank you for your affirmation and encouragement, Professor Qiu. You flatter me."
Chen Lin genuinely hadn’t expected such high praise from Qiu Chengtong. But along with his surprise, a warm feeling spread through him.
He recalled their exhilarating, hour-long academic exchange, and one detail in particular moved him.
According to the information he’d looked up online, a large part of Professor Qiu Chengtong’s research was deeply intertwined with theoretical physics.
In particular, his proof of the Calabi conjecture, from which the Calabi-Yau Manifold was constructed, had become a crucial part of superstring theory in modern physics.
Yet, during their discussion, Professor Qiu had approached every question from an angle that could be understood through pure mathematics alone.
This meant the venerable professor must have privately looked into him beforehand, knowing that his proficiency in physics wasn’t particularly high.
This meticulous consideration and respect moved Chen Lin far more than any extravagant praise ever could.
After a bit more casual conversation with Professor Qiu, the elderly professor glanced at the wall clock and said with a smile, "It’s getting late. You should head back now. Get some good rest and put some more time into preparing your presentation."
"Okay, I won’t disturb you any longer then."
Chen Lin bid Professor Qiu Chengtong farewell once more, then turned and left the office, and Huaqing University with it.
He and Shen Yan had a simple buffet dinner at the Western restaurant on the hotel’s ground floor before heading back to their own rooms.
Tomorrow was the first official day of the conference, and the first presentation at 8:30 in the morning was by Peter Schultz.
Just like Chen Lin’s, Schultz’s presentation was also scheduled for the main venue at Yanbei University.
It seemed the organizers had afforded this youngest-ever Fields Medalist, who was attending in person, the respect and prestige he deserved.
Chen Lin set his phone’s alarm for 7:30 in the morning.
He did a quick mental calculation. ’Half an hour is more than enough time to get ready and have breakfast at the hotel. It’s about a twenty-minute walk to the main venue, so I can definitely get there before the presentation begins.’
During dinner, he had already agreed with Shen Yan that they would go see Schultz’s presentation together the next morning.
After all, Shen Yan wasn’t very interested in the topics of the presentations at the other two concurrent sessions.
For her, the chance to witness the bearing of one of the greatest geniuses in modern mathematics was a far greater draw.
Back in his room, Chen Lin glanced at the time. It was just past 7:00 PM.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled the thick stack of scratch paper from his backpack, spread it out on the desk, and prepared to continue his research.
His current research topic—"Boundary of Differential Manifolds and Hallucination Control in Generative Models"—was currently in an awkward, intermediate stage.
Compared to his paper already published in JAMS, he had undoubtedly taken a huge step forward over the past twenty-plus days of continuous work.
But the ultimate result he truly hoped for had yet to be achieved.
What he really wanted was to propose a brand-new generative decoding algorithm based on boundary control in differential geometry.
This algorithm would be able to significantly reduce the hallucination rate of all current mainstream large models and could be directly applied in fields like text-to-image, video generation, and even more complex scientific research.
With the aid of his [Little Mathematician] title, Chen Lin could vaguely sense that he was getting very, very close to his final goal.
Unfortunately, mathematical research wasn’t the same as solving a math problem.
He could only continue to prove and calculate, line by line on his scratch paper, without knowing for sure how much longer it would take to reach his destination.
Snapping out of it, Chen Lin shook his head and pushed the cluttered thoughts aside.
’A last-minute effort is better than none!’
He decided to use tonight and tomorrow night to conduct another three hours of high-intensity research each evening.
If he managed to achieve a breakthrough, that would naturally be a cause for celebration.
Even if he still fell just short in the end, it didn’t matter.
For his presentation the afternoon after next, he would simply report on his latest progress. All his proofs and calculations were irrefutable anyway, so the quality of the results he presented was absolutely guaranteed.
...
「Three hours later, at 10:30 PM.」
Chen Lin set down his pen and carefully placed the three new, densely filled sheets of scratch paper into a folder.
He double-checked his backpack for the papers he had prepared to show Schultz tomorrow—his preliminary framework for the geometrization of the local Langlands Program for the "FF Curve." Once he confirmed they were there, he threw himself into bed.
A familiar exhaustion washed over him like a tide, and in less than a minute, he was sound asleep.
「The next day, 7:30 AM.」
Chen Lin woke up on time to the crisp sound of his alarm.
He quickly washed up, changed his clothes, put on his backpack, and went down to the restaurant on the hotel’s ground floor.
Shen Yan was already waiting there, taking small sips of a glass of warm milk.
After meeting up, the two finished their breakfast at a leisurely pace, then left the hotel and strolled toward the main venue at Yanbei University.
When they arrived at the venue, there were still about ten minutes until the presentation was scheduled to begin.
Chen Lin subconsciously activated the enhanced vision from his [Little Champion] title and discreetly scanned the auditorium.
The result was somewhat surprising.
The legendary genius, Peter Schultz, was nowhere to be seen in the auditorium; it seemed he hadn’t arrived yet.
What surprised him even more was that the number of attendees was far smaller than he had expected.
The tiered lecture hall, which could hold nearly a thousand people, was sparsely filled with less than half that number. Even many of the best seats in the front rows were still empty.
Chen Lin guessed to himself, ’Either the first session was just too early in the morning and many attendees couldn’t be bothered to wake up for it, or the content of Schultz’s upcoming talk is too abstruse for most people—or they simply don’t know anything about it—and so they aren’t interested.’ That was to be expected, though.
Chen Lin and Shen Yan exchanged a look and, with a silent understanding, chose seats in the back row, near a corner, and sat down discreetly.
"Hello, excuse me, are you Chen Lin?"
A hesitant voice asked in English by his ear.
Chen Lin, who had been scrolling through his phone out of boredom while waiting for the presentation to start, looked up at the sound of the voice.
He saw a young foreign woman with blonde hair and blue eyes standing gracefully beside his seat. Her azure eyes, filled with anticipation and excitement, were fixed on him.