Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

Chen Yushan has been panicking over the past 2 days.

Ever since she handed in her chart assignment to her supervisor, she had not gotten any new tasks.

Although this type of relaxed feeling was good, she was starting to get worried and wondered if she had somehow offended Professor Parsis.

Students were vulnerable to supervisors. If they accidentally offended their supervisors, the students would have a difficult two years of school. They might not even graduate.

Chen Yushan was especially worried because Professor Parsis would occasionally glance at her, giving her goosebumps.

Chen Yushan was thinking about if she should ask Parsis when the latter suddenly broke the silence and asked first, “You said that the Chinese New Year is on the 28th?”

This is…

Talking to me?

Chen Yushan gulped and asked her boss, “Every year is different, but this year is on 28th… Why?”

Professor Michelle Parsis looked at her with a blank expression.

Suddenly, Parsis squinted and a smirked appeared on her face.

This smile was almost horrifying enough to scare Chen Yushan.

Thankfully she did not actually jump out of her chair. Otherwise, she definitely would have offended this woman who was going through menopause.

Professor Parsis paused for a second and looked at the calendar on her desk. She then said, “You’ve worked hard over the past few months. Chinese New Year is in two weeks. From now until then, take a good break and rest a little.”

Chen Yushan: “…”

Is she…

Giving me a holiday?

This fortune came so sudden that Chen Yushan started to doubt if she heard it wrong.

She was just calling her family yesterday to tell them that she could not go back home this year.

Several master’s and PhD students in the office looked at her with envy.

Professor Parsis had never used this tone to speak with her students before. For a strict woman like her, her students were her employees – the kind of employees with a $300 per month salary.

The younger and prettier the student was, the colder and more demanding her attitude was.

However now…

The sun was rising from the west!

Michelle Parsis paused for a second and her smile started to become warmer and warmer as she said, “Oh yeah, one more thing. I’ve reconsidered the thesis research report you did on the Indian retail market. Your work in that thesis was tremendously helpful, so I moved your author position from fourth to first.”

Chen Yushan was still frozen and she looked at her professor as she said, “But Professor, I only helped to collect the documents and graphs…”

“Only?” Michelle Parsis looked at her with a serious expression and said, “Miss Chen, I have to tell you that the auxiliary work of collecting documents and graphs are just as important as writing the thesis. This work can not be described with ‘only’. This is justice, I will stick to my decision and put you side by side as the first author.”

Chen Yushan: “???”

…

The third week after New Year’s Eve, Lu Zhou took a flight to the West Coast.

Lu Zhou did not know if it was because his student’s name was in the conference submissions list, but he was invited to attend the Berkeley mathematics conference by Mr. Francis, the president of the American Mathematical Society.

Lu Zhou originally did not plan on attending this conference.

However, Francis was too enthusiastic. Since Lu Zhou had to go to San Francisco anyway, he accepted the invitation. He promised to attend the conference and see how his little apprentice was doing.

After all, this was her first report ever, and Lu Zhou was a little worried.

He landed at SFO and was picked up by Professor Tao Zhexuan.

Ever since the academic conference last year, the relationship between the two had been good.

Since Professor Tao’s research direction was broad, whenever he encountered problems in number theory and functional analysis, the two would chat online about the problem. When Professor Tao heard that Lu Zhou was attending the Berkeley conference, he immediately asked to pick Lu Zhou up from the airport.

Professor Tao sat in the car and asked, “So I heard you have been studying Collatz conjecture recently?”

Lu Zhou smiled and replied, “Yeah, are you interested as well?”

“Sort of. I used to research it a long time ago, but unfortunately, I didn’t succeed. My intuition tells me that this is a complex analysis problem, but after some in-depth research, I found out that I was wrong. It even has a connection with the Langlands program,” said Tao Zhexuan. He smiled embarrassedly while driving and said, “But you should be able to solve this problem with your capabilities. You’re the leading figure in number theory right now. If even you can’t solve it, then it might take centuries before the next mathematician can.”

Although Tao Zhexuan’s statement was a bit exaggerated, it was not outrageous. Not many people were in the field of additive number theory. The classical number theory problems were Goldbach’s conjecture and Waring’s Conjecture.

Now that Goldbach’s conjecture was solved by Lu Zhou, unless someone made significant contributions to Waring’s conjecture, Lu Zhou would be the top leading number theory mathematician.

Lu Zhou smiled and explained, “You’re exaggerating too much… Actually, I’m not the one doing this research project. It’s mainly done by my students. I’m only giving them suggestions. I’ve got no idea what the end result will be.”

“Oh I see, I thought you were the one researching this problem,” said Tao Zhexuan with a disappointed expression.

If Lu Zhou was the one solving this question, he would be looking forward to it.

It seemed now that he should not have such high expectations.

…

The American Mathematical Society arranged the hotel for this academic conference to be near Berkeley. As an invited scholar, Lu Zhou was booked a room by Mr. Francis. He only had to check in at the hotel counter.

Professor Tao sent Lu Zhou to the hotel. Since he still had a class to teach, he invited Lu Zhou to visit his house someday and promptly left.

Lu Zhou put his luggage in his room and did not stay at the hotel for long. He went downstairs and called a taxi.

Professor Sarrot’s research institute was in the south part of the San Francisco Bay Area. It wasn’t far from his hotel so he wanted to resolve this matter as soon as possible.

After Lu Zhou got on the taxi, he called Woolf and arranged a time to meet at the institute.

Lu Zhou thought that he would arrive first.

However, when he arrived, Woolf was already waiting for him at the entrance.

Woolf greeted Lu Zhou and said, “I didn’t expect you to come today. If you had told me earlier, I could have picked you up.”

Lu Zhou replied, “Something happened so I had to change my schedule. Who cares about this. Let’s deal with the matter at hand.”

Lu Zhou let Woolf led the way into the institute.

Compared to those large research institutions, this private research institute was undoubtedly a lot smaller. It was only three floors and the location was not optimal and it was difficult for commuters.

However, it still contained the essentials.

This laboratory had all of the equipment for any experiment Lu Zhou wanted to do.

Lu Zhou walked into the third-floor office and was prepared to greet the man in charge. However, he suddenly saw Professor Sarrot sitting on a sofa.

The two made eye contact.

Professor Sarrot did not expect that the person who was going to buy his research team was Lu Zhou, so he was pleasantly surprised.

Lu Zhou did not expect that Professor Sarrot was the “Lithium-air battery” guy from the MRS Conference. He knew that this name sounded familiar…

Lu Zhou confirmed that he did not misrecognize Sarrot.

Then…

Without hesitating, he turned around and started to leave.

However, Professor Sarrot exclaimed before Lu Zhou could even take a step.

“Wait a minute! I’ll sell it to you for eight million dollars, no, five million dollars! Please don’t go!”