Chapter 383 - 204: Intersect, Part 2

Chapter 383: Chapter 204: Intersect, Part 2

"Mr. Pierre, you can’t do this."

Arthur lowered his voice and spoke rapidly.

"There’s a group media interview scheduled for you this afternoon. Several high-level officials from Shanghai City will be at the closing banquet tomorrow night, and they’ve specifically requested to meet you. You’re the headlining guest for this conference! If you leave now, the organizers are going to go crazy!"

Pierre looked at Arthur.

He reached up and grabbed the blue lanyard around his neck.

The lanyard held a clear plastic badge that read "VIP Guest."

Pierre yanked the lanyard from his neck and tossed it onto a nearby registration table in the hallway.

The plastic badge clattered onto the wooden table with a sharp sound.

"That’s their problem, not mine."

Pierre looked away.

"I don’t want to spend another second in this boring circus. Listening to those people on stage drone on with their safe, pointless nonsense is slowly killing me."

"But, sir..."

Arthur tried to reason with him again.

"You stay here."

Pierre pointed at Arthur.

"You handle the rest—the speeches, the banquet, and those idiotic interviews. Tell them I had a sudden angina attack, or that I couldn’t acclimatize and had to return home for treatment."

Arthur stared at his boss, dumbfounded.

"So you’re going to Huizhou... really, with no security and no translator? You don’t speak a single word of Chinese."

Pierre turned and continued on his way.

"I’m going to see a mathematician who can cleave open topological spaces. Bringing bodyguards to meet an old comrade would be an insult to him."

Pierre went down the hall, heading straight for the hotel’s rear employee entrance.

Arthur stood frozen, watching the stubborn figure disappear around the corner before letting out a heavy sigh.

He turned and looked at the closed doors of the conference hall, already imagining the look of utter devastation on the organizers’ faces when they heard the news.

「9:00 PM.」

「Shanghai Railway Station.」

This was a world away from the international conference center.

There was no air conditioning, no carpet, and no hushed conversations.

The waiting hall was crammed with people.

The air was a mix of sweat, tobacco smoke, and instant noodles.

A shrill female voice blared from the loudspeakers, announcing the arrival of train after train.

People shoved their way through the crowd, shouldering enormous red-and-blue woven plastic bags. Others had simply spread newspapers on the floor and were lying down to sleep.

Dressed in an elegant, dark gray suit and carrying a small brown leather case, Pierre stood before the bustling ticket gate.

He was completely out of place among them.

But he didn’t frown.

He watched the young, sweat-drenched worker shouldering his woven bag, and the woman nearby arguing loudly with a vendor over a few coins.

’This is what’s real.’

’It’s coarse, noisy, and brimming with a sort of feral vitality.’

’In Pierre’s mind, the old fellow in Huizhou had to be someone who lived against this kind of backdrop.’

’You couldn’t come up with a discrete truncation tool that cuts like a rusty saw if you spent all day sitting in sterile labs and carpeted offices.’

’Only in this chaotic soil, where one struggles for daily survival, could that kind of reckless, straight-for-the-jugular, butcher’s mentality take root.’

"Train K841 is now boarding..."

A nearby attendant in a blue uniform shouted through a megaphone.

The crowd began to surge toward the gate.

Pierre moved with the crowd. He handed the ticket inspector a soft-sleeper ticket he had obtained through special channels.

The ticket inspector glanced at his face, then at the soft-sleeper ticket, and said in broken English,

"Platform three."

Pierre nodded and descended the stairs, case in hand.

A green-skinned train sat on the tracks, its carriages mottled and painted with white serial numbers.

He found the soft-sleeper car and boarded.

The compartment had four berths. Fortunately, on this daytime run, he had it all to himself.

The compartment’s furnishings were somewhat dated. The beds were made with white sheets, and on the small table between them sat a stainless-steel thermos and a plastic tray.

Pierre slid his leather case under the lower bunk and sat down on it.

CLANK.

The train car shuddered, and the train began to move slowly.

The crowd of well-wishers on the platform started to recede. Sunlight streamed through the slightly yellowed glass of the window, illuminating the side of Pierre’s face.

He let out a long breath.

The frustration that had been building for days at the conference began to dissipate with the train’s acceleration, blown away by the wind.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the manuscript.

He spread it out on the small table.

Pierre looked at the name credited on the first page:

C. Zhuo.

He leaned against the window, watching the scenery of the Shanghai suburbs fly past, and couldn’t help but smile again.

He even began to rehearse the next day’s meeting in his head.

’I won’t check into some fancy hotel. I’ll take a taxi straight to Keda.’

’I’ll wander around the Keda campus. Maybe in some dilapidated office in the math department, or in a dusty corner of the library piled high with old books.’

’And there, I’ll find him: an old man in faded clothes with a god-awful temper.’

’Then, I’ll walk right up to him and slap this manuscript down on his desk.’

’What should my first line be?’

’"That mapping of yours for the algebraic closed chain? It’s as ugly as a lump of mud."’

’Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll say.’

Pierre could just imagine the old man flying into a rage when he heard that.

Then they would find a blackboard, grab some chalk, and in some forgotten corner of campus, they’d have a massive argument in the language of highest-dimension topology.