Awakening Elementary School System in University

Just yesterday afternoon, the joint project team from Yannan University and the Science and Technology University formally announced their momentous paper—"Research on the Evolution of Solid-Liquid Interfacial Stress Fields Based on Fractal Geometry and Its Influence Mechanism on Lithium Dendrite Growth."

This announcement, along with the materials and report they submitted to the project’s governing body, meant that nearly a year of painstaking effort by the research group at Shuangdan University, who were working on the very same solid-state battery project, had all been for naught.

The performance tests on the new batch of samples were only half-complete, but no one was bothering to monitor them anymore.

There was no longer any point.

Professor Hong, the project lead, gave everyone on the team time off, telling them to go home, get some rest, and clear their heads.

Yet, not a single person left.

A dozen or so people were scattered around the lab, some standing, some sitting. All wore numb expressions, and no one said a word.

After a long while, a voice thick with guilt and bitterness broke the suffocating silence.

"I’m sorry... Professor Hong, all my seniors... It’s me... I’ve let everyone down."

The speaker was a short young man wearing thick, black-framed glasses.

His head was bowed, his hands tightly clenching the hem of his shirt. His knuckles had turned white from the pressure, and his voice carried a barely perceptible tremor.

His name was Jin Che, a graduate student in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Shuangdan University. He was also a minor celebrity in the Modu university scene, known for being a superstar student.

As an undergraduate, he had relied on his superhuman talent and astonishing perseverance to earn a double degree in Applied Mathematics and Materials Chemistry.

After joining Professor Hong’s research group, he thrived. Leveraging his profound expertise in mathematical modeling, he quickly became the absolute cornerstone of the team’s theoretical calculations.

Everyone had placed high hopes on him, expecting him to be the one to break through the crucial mathematical bottleneck.

But at the most critical moment, he had fumbled.

Although he had also tried to use mathematical tools to describe and solve the complex interfacial stress field, he had failed to make any substantial progress.

Even though no one blamed him—in fact, they had tried to console him—an immense sense of failure and guilt still weighed on him like a heavy boulder, making it almost impossible to breathe.

Hearing this, Professor Hong, who was sitting at a lab bench, slowly raised his head. His bloodshot eyes held not a trace of blame, only deep, profound fatigue.

He shook his head, his voice somewhat hoarse. "No, Jin. This isn’t your fault."

"Our rivals’ strength in mathematics is, admittedly, greater than that of the joint team we formed with ND-Era."

ND-Era was the undisputed leader of the domestic battery industry and Shuangdan University’s partner on this joint research project.

Just this morning, the project manager from ND-Era had called Professor Hong to formally notify him of their withdrawal from the project.

Professor Hong knew full well that ND-Era must have already sent people to make contact with Yannan University or the Science and Technology University.

Capital always has the sharpest nose.

Professor Hong leaned back in his chair and stared at the ghastly white lights on the ceiling, his thoughts drifting back to a little over ten days ago.

Back then, when Chen Lin’s JAMS paper went viral, seeing the words "Yannan University" had sparked a faint, ominous premonition within him.

He had heard about the way Principal Chang Kai of Yannan University and several of its deans operated.

They were flexible and unconventional, willing to try anything to secure resources for the university.

He had thought at the time, ’If Yannan University is sharp enough to have Chen Lin help their joint project team with the Science and Technology University solve that mathematical bottleneck, it will be disastrous for us.’

Now, it seemed his premonition had come true.

’Perhaps I never should have chosen to go head-to-head with Yannan University and the Science and Technology University on this solid-state battery project from the start.’

’Did we lose simply because they published their paper before us?’

Professor Hong shook his head with a wry, inward smile.

’Not a chance.’

They were all from the nation’s top-tier universities, research teams composed of the best professors in their fields leading the most brilliant students. No one who made it this far was an idiot.

𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Before Chen Lin burst onto the scene, the two sides’ research and development progress had been virtually neck and neck, with each pulling ahead at different times.

There might have been a gap in skill, but it was minuscule—certainly not enough to explain the current situation, where the other team had left them so far in the dust they couldn’t even see their taillights.

Ultimately, they had lost to that one young man.

At this thought, a wave of helpless frustration washed over Professor Hong, finally culminating in a long sigh.

’Yannan University... they’ve really produced an incredible super-genius!’

’Such a promising talent, a future pillar of our country...’

’If only he had come from our Shuangdan University...’

...

「October 27th, 7:30 PM.」

At the desk in Chen Lin’s rented room, his phone alarm chimed.

[Study the problem in Schultz’s email.]

Chen Lin turned off the alarm, took a deep breath, and pulled over a fresh stack of scratch paper. He uncapped his pen, his eyes falling on the email from Peter Schultz on his computer screen.

Over the past week, to squeeze out more time to prepare for the mathematics conference at the end of the month, he had increased his daily usage of the [Little Mathematician] title from two and a half hours to its three-hour limit.

He had also shifted his research period from the afternoon to an immovable block of time: 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM.

After three hours of intense, brain-burning work each day, the fatigue from his depleted Spiritual Power would hit him right on schedule. He would practically fall asleep the moment he hit the bed, sleeping soundly until morning without even having a chance to dream.

His biological clock would wake him at 7:30 the next morning, leaving him refreshed and full of energy.

Repeating this cycle, he had accidentally developed a healthy routine of sleeping early and rising early, making him a veritable wellness guru among his university peers.

Right now, Chen Lin was already in the zone.

His gaze grew focused and deep, his brain operating at high speed, empowered by [Little Mathematician].

In the email, Schultz had posed two cutting-edge problems he considered extremely challenging. Chen Lin didn’t try to tackle both at once. Instead, he focused all his energy on one of them: the problem of the geometrization of the local Langlands Program for the FF Curve.

The tip of his pen flew across the scratch paper, emitting a rhythmic scratching sound.

Complex and abstract mathematical symbols combined and evolved under his pen.

Empowered by [Little Mathematician], he quickly found a novel path for an algebraic geometry proof based on Perfect Space theory.

...

「October 28th, 10:30 PM.」

When the alarm on his desk rang again, Chen Lin slowly set down his pen and let out a long, slow breath.

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his slightly throbbing temples, a wry smile touching his lips.

’This stuff... is way too hard!’

Chen Lin had a very direct and quantifiable metric for his current mathematical research abilities: the number of scratch paper sheets he could fill in a three-hour period.

In the early days after gaining the [Little Mathematician] title, solving math problems—whether at the high school, undergraduate, or even graduate level—had been as easy as breathing. Filling ten sheets of scratch paper in three hours was a breeze.

But when he started doing actual "research" rather than just "problem-solving," his speed plummeted dramatically.

Back when he was writing his thesis on the High-dimensional Monge-Ampere Equation, he averaged five sheets of scratch paper per session.

Then, over the last two weeks, as he focused on preparing the final results for his report on "Manifold Boundary and Hallucination Control in Generative Models" for the upcoming math conference, his pace slowed even more.

At first, he could get through four pages a session. But the deeper he went, the more abstruse the problems became, and the slower he got.

The night before last, when he completed the final section of that report, he had barely managed to fill three pages in three hours.

But for the past two days, as he began tackling the problem from Schultz’s email, his output dropped again. Last night, in three hours, he had struggled to fill three pages.

And today, when the alarm rang, he glanced down. Strikingly, the third page of scratch paper still had about five blank lines.