Chapter 125 - 122: Everyone Is Equal Before the Truth
Li Dong stared at the news on his phone about how he was "shaking up the world," then locked the screen, feeling satisfied.
’Alright, that’s enough basking in the glory.’
He was starting to get a little hungry. He was the only one left in the dorm room; the other three maniacs had left long ago.
That was just how intense the grind was in dorm 404.
Li Dong tidied up a bit and headed out, planning to grab a quick bite at the cafeteria.
As he walked, Li Dong could clearly feel that the atmosphere around him was different from usual.
Many of the students who passed by glanced his way, intentionally or not. A few girls were even whispering to each other.
’Can you get famous from academia now?’
Li Dong wondered to himself. This was the first time he’d ever experienced being the center of attention.
Seeing the eager, slightly "awed" looks from his classmates, Li Dong subconsciously straightened his back. His stride became more composed and confident as he tried to project the scholarly air befitting a top-journal powerhouse.
Just then, a male student walked up to him.
Li Dong panicked a little. ’Why is it that even when I’m famous, I only attract guys?’
"Hey, man," the student said, trying hard to stifle a laugh as he pointed at Li Dong’s chest. "Your shirt is on backward."
"Huh?" Li Dong froze for a second, then followed the student’s finger and glanced down.
The moment he saw it, he froze completely.
He had been so shocked by the video of himself that morning that he’d completely failed to notice his cotton T-shirt was not only on backward, but inside out as well!
’Son of a bitch...’ he raged internally.
’No wonder so many people were staring at me! They weren’t looking at some academic powerhouse, they were looking at a damn idiot!’
"Th-thanks," Li Dong managed, forcing a smile that looked worse than a grimace.
Then, feigning composure, he quickly ducked into the nearest public restroom.
When he came back out, the look of calm composure was completely gone.
’Damn it, so it was all just an illusion!’
After grabbing a quick bite at the cafeteria, he made his way to the Science Building for his "Foundations of Geometry and Topology" class.
The instant Li Dong stepped into the lecture hall, the once-noisy room fell strangely silent for a second.
Every student in the class turned to look at him in unison.
Li Dong’s heart skipped a beat, and he subconsciously looked down to check his clothes again.
’Collar is straight, seams are on the inside... It’s not on backward!’
This time, Li Dong had truly misunderstood. He really was famous.
Yan University had plenty of liberal arts students, not just science majors. Out and about on campus, people might not put a face to the name.
But here, in a science-track class at Yuanpei College, who wasn’t following the recent academic earthquake?
The state media had personally stepped in to praise him by name, for crying out loud.
In the front row, the three maniacs from his dorm were waving frantically at him. They had even saved him a seat, right in the middle of the first row.
Steeling himself, Li Dong walked down the aisle, faintly overhearing the chatter.
"Is that him?"
"It has to be!"
"That dimensionality reduction algorithm for non-trivial zeros... is it really as amazing as the news claims?"
"Hmph, you’d better believe it. I pulled his code from GitHub yesterday and ran it on my gaming laptop."
"It’s exactly like the paper says. It crunched through the first few million zeros in just a couple of minutes. The memory management is beautifully written, too. That algorithm is absolutely insane!"
Li Dong sat down next to Wang Hao, his face a mask of indifference, but inside, he was complaining wildly.
’When you’re talking about someone, can’t you say their name a little louder? If you only talk about the algorithm, how is anyone supposed to know that the genius you’re talking about is me, Li Dong?’
Soon, the instructor, Professor Zhang, walked into the classroom.
This was Professor Zhang Zhiqiang, the same professor who held Chen Nan and Liu Qiang in high regard.
His main fields were Algebraic Topology and differential geometry, and he was a leading figure in the School of Mathematics.
As Professor Zhang entered, his gaze paused on Li Dong for a moment. He smiled, gave him a nod, and then walked to the lectern.
"Class, in high school, the math you learned was analytic geometry and the basic calculations of Calculus."
"Those topics taught you how to calculate an angle, an area, or a specific value within a rigid Euclidean space."
Professor Zhang drew a circle and a square on the blackboard.
"But now that you’re in college, in this ’Foundations of Geometry and Topology’ course, you have to learn to change your way of thinking."
"We no longer care how large a shape is or what its angles are. We care about the structures and properties that remain invariant under continuous deformation of space."
"Moving from rote calculation of values to perceiving underlying structures—that is the leap from high school math to modern mathematics."
Professor Zhang explained complex concepts in simple terms. The prodigies in the audience had learned to be smart, too. No one was scribbling notes frantically anymore; instead, they all raised their phones to snap pictures of the diagrams and core concepts on the board.
The class was more than halfway over before anyone knew it.
Professor Zhang put down his chalk and smiled.
"Alright, that’s enough theory for now. Let’s see if you’ve all been paying attention and have successfully shifted your way of thinking."
He turned and wrote a problem on the blackboard:
[Given three non-collinear points A, B, and C on a two-dimensional plane (with all internal angles of triangle ABC being less than 120 degrees), find the point P such that the sum of the distances PA + PB + PC is minimized.]
"This is a very classic optimization problem known as the Fermat point problem."
Professor Zhang looked out at the students with a smile.
"Who can solve it? Come on up and explain your approach to the class."
No one in the class raised a hand.
The problem wasn’t actually that difficult. Among the academic prodigies of Yuanpei College, at least half had encountered similar variations in high school math competitions.
But now, in a moment of strange unanimity, no one moved. Instead, they all silently turned their gazes toward Li Dong in the front row.
Seeing this, Professor Zhang couldn’t help but laugh.
"Hey now, why are you all looking at Li Dong?"
Professor Zhang teased.
"The paper he published in *Mathematics Computing* was on algorithms and number theory, not this geometry problem."
"Have you all lost the courage to even come up to the board and solve a problem?"
Professor Zhang’s words hit their mark.
The students weren’t holding back because they didn’t know the answer. They were afraid of looking foolish in front of a "True God" like Li Dong. What if their solution was too clumsy? They’d be looked down upon or even ridiculed.
"In academia, if you don’t even have the courage to challenge authority and showcase your own abilities—if you admit defeat before the competition even begins—then how do you expect to conduct research in the future?"
Professor Zhang’s tone was grave as he addressed the students.
The moment he finished speaking, Wang Hao, who was sitting next to Li Dong, stood up.
"Teacher Zhang, I’ll give it a try!"
Professor Zhang nodded, satisfied.
"Good. Come on up."
Wang Hao walked up to the board, picked up a piece of chalk, and dove straight into the most classic and rigorous geometric-algebraic solution. He drew the triangle on the board and quickly wrote out the core steps:
[Rotate triangle APB 60 degrees around point B to obtain triangle A’P’B. Triangle PBP’ is now an equilateral triangle, so PB = PP’.]
[The sum of the distances is thus transformed: PA + PB + PC = P’A’ + P’P + PC.]
[Since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the sum is minimized when the points A’, P’, P, and C are collinear.]
[It can then be easily proven that ∠APB = ∠BPC = ∠CPA = 120 degrees.]
The entire process was logically rigorous.
Professor Zhang nodded and addressed the class.
"Wang Hao’s solution is perfectly correct! Using geometric rotation to construct collinear points is the simplest and most efficient way to approach this problem."
"So you see, in the face of truth, everyone is equal. Don’t be intimidated by anyone’s reputation!"
This was, in fact, the real message Professor Zhang wanted to convey to these young prodigies.
He was afraid they would be so intimidated by Li Dong that they’d lose their drive, which was the entire point of today’s lesson.
As Wang Hao walked back down from the board, he felt Professor Zhang was right.
’I might not be Li Dong’s equal when it comes to fundamental algorithms right now,’ he thought, ’but when faced with a pure problem of mathematical geometry, the correct solution is simply the correct solution.’
’In this area, I, Wang Hao, am in no way inferior to you, Li Dong!’
He sat back down, eager to see Li Dong’s reaction.
He looked over and saw that Li Dong had also just solved the problem on a piece of scratch paper.
Only...
"What the fuck?"
Wang Hao couldn’t help but let out a low gasp.