He was about to pack his things and go back to his apartment.

“Brother Li, how come you disappeared? I tried looking for you. We already finished dinner.”

Li Mo shook his head.

“It’s fine, I’ll go get some food later. There are a lot of restaurants nearby.”

He grabbed his backpack and was about to leave, but the chubby guy grabbed his shoulder.

“Wait a second, where did you go?”

Li Mo paused for a second and spoke.

“Oh, I went to find Academician Lu.”

“Find Academician Lu? What happened?”

“I asked him to be my mentor, I want him to teach me mathematics!”

Meng Fei was a little confused.

“… And he agreed?”

Li Mo shook his head.

“Nope.”

“I told you.” Meng Fei shook his head and said, “He’s an academician, a rocket scientist, why would he teach a high school student?”

Li Mo nodded and said, “But…”

Meng Fei paused for a second and asked, “But what?”

The guy in the baseball cap clenched his fist and said, “But he promised me that, if I won an IMO gold medal, he would accept me as his student.”

An IMO gold medal.

Sounded challenging.

However, it was possible.

After all, he was the only person who solved the last question of the national IMO training exam!

Meng Fei wasn’t excited at all; he looked at Li Mo like he was a dumb*ss.

Li Mo didn’t know why his friend looked dissatisfied.

“Why are you looking at me like that? You don’t think I can do it?”

“No,” Meng Fei shook his head and said, “Brother Li, if you do win a gold medal, instead of going to Shuimu University or Yan University, you decide to go to Jin Ling University… Wouldn’t your father kill you?”

Even though Academician Lu was a top scholar, Jin Ling University was no match compared to Shuimu University or Yan University. Even though the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study had made great scientific research achievements in recent years, the reputation and academic prestige were nowhere near that of Shuimu University or Yan Universities’.

Anyone getting into Shuimu University or Yan University would be envied by all of their neighbors, but getting into Jin Ling University wasn’t the same…

However, after hearing the chubby guy’s words, Li Mo confidently shook his head.

“Not afraid at all, what is there to be afraid of? I have already decided! Academician Lu wouldn’t lie to me. If I get the gold medal, he’s going to be my teacher!”

“Then get ready for an as* beating from your dad! Okay, I won’t persuade you…” Meng Fei shook his head and patted his buddy on the shoulder. “I’ll support you wherever you go.”

Li Mo looked at his chubby friend and spoke.

“Good!”

“Hey, but then again, if I were the one to win a gold medal and decide to go to Jin Ling University instead… I would be scared sh*tless of my dad…”

Li Mo looked at his friend and sighed.

“Don’t worry, you won’t win a medal.”

Meng Fei: “Why do you have to do that…”

Li Mo smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

“Just kidding, come, let’s get food.”

“I just ate… Whatever, I’ll come anyway.”

…

Lu Zhou didn’t know that he had already planted a seed inside a certain teenager.

After Lu Zhou left Yan University’s campus, he got in his car and called his office. He asked his assistant Zhao Huan to buy a plane ticket for his newly poached “talent”.

He didn’t come all the way to Beijing to poach a talent; he had more important things to do.

After Lu Zhou got in the car, he called the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study and told them about the new hire.

After returning to the hotel, Lu Zhou received the conference summary from the Lunar Orbit Committee and briefly looked at his obligations.

As a chief designer, in addition to giving a speech at the opening ceremony, he was also the face of the entire project.

As for the other troublesome matters, such as negotiating with diplomats from other countries, those were handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They had been preparing for the past two months for this event.

While Lu Zhou was on his New Year’s holiday, these people were working around the clock.

Lu Zhou glanced at the meeting summary and tossed it aside. Lu Zhou took out his notebook and wrote down the things written on the blackboard this afternoon.

Even though his research wasn’t on the Hodge conjecture, he still learned a lot from Chen Yang’s calculations.

For example, the method Chen Yang used when defining the topological invariants of the cohomology class described the basic features of a complex manifold. This gave Lu Zhou a new idea for the application of the Étale cohomology group.

Even though this idea wasn’t particularly clever, it was novel enough that Lu Zhou was surprised to see this being invented by a guy closed off to the rest of the world.

Maybe after five years of intensive research, Chen Yang has a deep understanding of algebraic geometry.

He’s just lacking in mathematical tools and experience.

This was one of the main reasons Lu Zhou wanted to poach him. Lu Zhou believed he had the resources to make Chen Yang flourish.

With a pen in his hand, Lu Zhou stared at the lines of calculations in the notebook. He muttered to himself, “Bridging the gap between complex manifolds and topology, finding answers in higher dimensions… This guy is a genius.”

The problem in its high-dimensional case was easier than the low-dimensional case. This sounded a little weird, but there was a reason behind it. Similarly, in the 1960s, Professor Smale came up with a genius idea, which was that the Poincaré conjecture in its high-dimensional case was easier than its three-dimensional case.

Smale used his genius idea to finally prove the Poincaré conjecture in its five-dimensional space and above, thus winning a Fields Medal.

“I didn’t expect the hyperelliptic curve analysis method to be applied like this. I guess my mathematical tool is more powerful than I had thought.

“It seems like I have stepped on a treasure.”

The more Lu Zhou dived into these formulas, the more his eyes began to shine.

For some reason, Lu Zhou felt like he just took another big step forward toward solving Riemann’s hypothesis.

“I wonder if Vera has finished writing her thesis yet.”

Lu Zhou had this urge to publish a thesis. He opened his computer and searched in the literature database. He then checked whether or not his students had recently published any papers.

After all, the things that Vera sent him were unpublished work. He couldn’t use them without referencing Vera.

It was common for scholars to wait for their colleagues to publish before publishing their own theses.

Of course, there were also scholars who were not as nice as Lu Zhou.

Unfortunately, after searching the database, Lu Zhou didn’t find any theses published by Vera.

I guess she either hasn’t submitted it, or it’s still in peer review.

“Why hasn’t she published yet?”

Lu Zhou closed the literature database software and opened Xiao Ai’s custom thesis writing software.

He still had to write a thesis; however, he couldn’t publish in a journal yet.

“I guess… I’ll upload a preprint first.”