The East Is Dark, but the West Is Bright

For the next period of time, Shen Qi continued to attend classes in the Spelman Hall.

The scope of courses covered has been drastically reduced from eighteen to four: Mathematical Physics, Algebraic Geometry, Number Theory, and Group Theory.

These four branches are precisely Professor Muller's areas of expertise.

I attend classes during the day and write papers at night, so my sleep time is from 2 a. m. to 6 a. m. every day.

Shen Qi stepped into Princeton on August 15th, and today is September 30th, and he hasn't stepped out of the campus once.

The legend about the school gate might be true; to achieve excellent results at Princeton University, you have to work hard because your competitors are world-class talents.

Eastern Time in the United States is 13 hours behind China Time, so Shen Qi and his family and friends usually communicate in the early hours of the morning in the United States.

"I'm living a fulfilling and happy life now. This semester I'm taking 16 courses across four different areas, and I'm optimistically estimating I can get 105 credits," Shen Qi said to Ou Ye on WeChat. This is one of the few forms of leisure and entertainment he enjoys in the United States.

Ou Ye: "It breaks my heart."

Shen Qi: "Old man Muller is a kind German. I was quite surprised to become a sixth-generation disciple of the Göttingen School. By the way, my grandmaster was Kurt Gödel, and my great-uncle was Albert Einstein. You can learn about the lives of my grandmaster and great-uncle."

Ou Ye: "Pee!"

Shen Qi: "I'm currently working on two research papers simultaneously. One can be seen as an important stepping stone for RH, and the other is a legacy project—the agreement between you and me."

Ou Ye: "Don't work too hard, go to sleep early, it's already past midnight in America!"

Shen Qi: "Yeah, you should go to sleep early too... I mean, take a nap."

After four hours of deep sleep, Shen Qi got up to greet the morning sunlight.

"I feel as comfortable as a hibernating bear; I've never felt so at ease in my turbulent life."

Stretching, Shen Qi recalled what Einstein had said when he first arrived at Princeton.

After washing up, Shen Qi put on his sportswear and sneakers and went downstairs for a morning run, which was his daily routine.

To live in the US and compete at Princeton, you have to be in top physical shape.

Many American teachers and students exercise in the morning. Americans especially love running, exercising, and working out because they can't afford to get sick.

Shen Qi ran around the school, passing various buildings along the way.

The doors of PPPL are locked. It is the Princeton Plasma Laboratory, the only national laboratory in the United States researching nuclear fusion.

The main building of the Flint Library, the Harvey-Falleston Memorial, was wide open. The main building is open 24 hours a day. Some students came out of the main building with bloodshot eyes and looked very tired, as if they had stayed up all night.

Nassau Hall is the oldest and only remaining original building on campus. It has survived two fires and cannonballs from the War of Independence and still stands strong.

As an iconic building in Princeton, Nassau Hall now houses the offices of the president and senior university administrators.

The current president Mr. Johnson, has only recently taken office. In his inaugural address, he stated that Princeton University has never offered popular disciplines such as business, law, and medicine, nor has it done so in the past, nor will it do so now, at least not during his term.

Taking medicine as an example, medical schools must be integrated with clinical applications, and operating a large medical school and clinical medical system requires a lot of human, material and financial resources.

Therefore, Princeton University insists on not establishing a medical school. They focus on basic research, keeping it small and specialized, rather than trying to be large and comprehensive. They concentrate all their funds and faculty to provide a world-class education for thousands of students.

After running several kilometers, Shen Qi returned to the graduate student dormitory building and saw his fellow student, Dr. Jonas, sitting under a tree, lost in thought.

Jonas would spend more than five hours a day under this pine tree, feeding the squirrels and playing with the birds. Shen Qi was already used to it.

Shen Qi bought two coffees from the graduate student dormitory's catering department, packed them up, and then went to the tree to hand Jonas a cup of coffee. "Good morning, Jonas."

"Good morning, thank you for the coffee," Jonas said politely as he took the coffee.

"Has he come up with any inspiration?" Shen Qi deduced that Jonas had been pursuing his doctorate for two and a half years without publishing a single paper, spending his days sitting under the tree pondering. This Swedish senior must be working on some amazing idea.

"There is no such thing as inspiration, it's just pure thinking," Jonas said.

"Oh." Shen Qi didn't press the matter further. He just had a vague feeling that Jonas must have a doctoral research topic, and if the other person didn't want to talk about it, so be it.

"Actually, I just don't want to go back to Sweden so soon," Jonas said, sounding somewhat melancholy.

"What are you running away from?" Shen Qi asked.

"I don't like that woman, and I don't want to marry her," Jonas sighed.

Running away from a wedding? How exciting! This Swedish guy has a story to tell.

Shen Qi tentatively asked, "So that woman's family has a powerful background, and her family put pressure on your family, forcing you to marry her?"

"No, that's not it. No one in Sweden can force my family." Jonas shook his head, looking very sad. "Yes, I'm running away. There are some things I can't reveal publicly, so I can only choose to run away, flee Europe, flee to America, just like the scholars in Göttingen back then. Thank you, Shen Qi, thank you for the coffee, thank you for your patience in listening to me ramble on about these trivial things. How about we go to the Tiger Inn for a drink tonight? It's on me."

"Let's go Dutch today, Jonas. You've already bought me drinks twice, once when Malmö beat Bayern and the other time when Malmö lost to Manchester United. Which team are you a fan of?" Shen Qi asked.

"The result doesn't matter, it's just an excuse to drink," Jonas said. "See you tonight, it's on me, since I extended the invitation."

Jonas is a very easy person to get along with. He is polite, generous, and loves to pay the bill. He has been at Princeton for 7 years and has never bothered to apply for a scholarship, which suggests that he comes from a well-off family.

Shen Qi thought Jonas must be a rich second-generation from Sweden. He was tall and handsome, and in Sweden he would definitely be the kind of rich and handsome guy who would be pursued by girls.

Shen Qi accepted Jonas's invitation; he didn't want to owe Jonas for drinks, and he planned to insist on paying the bill that night.

Fortunately, today was a day off, and there were no classes during the day. Shen Qi spent the whole day writing his paper, but encountered some problems.

The problem is how to prove a formula that includes the value of the zeta function at odd points: α^k(1/2ζ(1-2k)+Σn^2k-1/e^2nα-1)=(-β)^k(1/2ζ(1-2k)+Σn^2k-1/e^2nβ-1)...

Even Hardy, a true man who dared to fight against God, couldn't get past Riemann.

Hardy's Proof Method is ineffective against RH. Although it is generally considered the best proof, the proof that positive numbers α and β satisfy Σ means that when k is an odd number 2m-1, the last term is full of loopholes.

This is Shen Qi's biggest problem right now. His new proposal has been approved by Professor Muller, but problems keep arising in the process of defining and elaborating on it.

Shen Qi clearly underestimated the difficulty of the ζ(2n+1) problem, and he was having a headache.

This shows how extreme RH is; even RH's phased research projects have brought the team from the Mathematics Department at Princeton University to a standstill.

Mary's situation isn't much better; her skin has been in bad shape lately, with noticeable freckles on her face.

Mary was troubled and upset, and didn't even feel like putting on makeup. Her husband wasn't in the US, so there was no one to comfort her.

Professor Muller's RH project encountered obstacles, so Shen Qi temporarily suspended the research and took on side jobs to adjust his mood and thinking.

His side project was the Proof of Diophantine Equation Wash Conjecture. Shen Qi was re-drafting this paper, a task that had actually begun last June but had yet to be formally published after numerous setbacks. This paper was a gift that Shen Qi had promised to give to Ou Ye.

There are gains and losses; when one door closes, another opens.

When Shen Qi completed the proof that the two sets of positive integer solutions (Xi, Yi) (i=1,2), Y2>Y1>1, do not satisfy |±√-1(xi-yi√-t/(xi+yi√-t)-X^1/4|<1/8, he jumped up excitedly. He wanted to shout to the whole world, "I succeeded! I finally succeeded!"

Shen Qi rushed downstairs to the familiar pine tree, hugged Jonas, and shouted with a radiant smile, "Jonas, I did it! I did it! I proved the Wash Conjecture completely using the simplest method!"

Jonas sat under that pine tree all day, from sunrise to sunset, and he stayed even after the squirrels had all gone.

"Oh, really? Congratulations! You've only been at Princeton for a little over a month and you've already proven the Wash Conjecture. That's remarkable." Jonas was pleased with Shen Qi, and he maintained his gentle, refined smile, "So tonight, we won't leave until we're drunk, my Chinese mathematician."