What Did You Write?!

Wang Lili's heart leaped with joy the moment she saw the paper.

What a small world!

Could it be someone with the same name? Zhang Yuan was such a common name—there had to be ten thousand people with it across the entire Xia Kingdom!

"Probably not someone with the same name. A few days ago, I think I heard he was writing some kind of kinematics paper..."

"Haha, the Horse-Feeding Official has fallen into my hands!"

The more Wang Lili thought about it, the more excited she got. Whenever she remembered how her intelligence had been thoroughly insulted that afternoon, and how she'd had no way to get even, she felt a knot of resentment in her chest.

"You little Horse-Feeding Official, what could possibly be good about your paper?"

"I'll tear it to shreds, then criticize it until it's worthless and make the boss give you a good scolding!"

With that thought, she quickly said to her boyfriend, "Sorry, something's come up. I have to go."

"Huh? What!" The poor guy had spent ages sweet-talking his beloved girl into going out with him, and had been planning to do something a little naughty.

Then this happened.

"My professor gave me an assignment. I can't help it; I have to go read a paper."

But he had no way to complain...

"Then I'll ask you out again tomorrow..."

"Sure. We'll see if I'm free tomorrow."

And so Wang Lili abandoned her boyfriend and eagerly threw herself into the "revolutionary cause" of reading the paper.

Two hours later, she sat blankly in front of her computer.

"The writing is so verbose. Is he just padding it out nonstop to make it longer?"

"This point does have some substance, though."

Huh? What's this?

Hmm... Let me think.

Maybe I should look up some papers.

Gradually, her face flushed.

A strange dizziness spread through her body. The dense blocks of text looked like gibberish, and by the end, she had no idea what she was reading.

Read it again!

Still no good...

Read it again!

Wang Lili felt utterly frustrated, as if she were about to suffocate.

So annoying!

I can't understand it!

After dinner, Zhang Yuan and Han Ziyue took a stroll along the pedestrian street near campus. They didn't buy anything. For women, shopping and buying things were actually two different activities...

Then they slipped past the dorm supervisor and went to Han Ziyue's room to "fix her computer."

The computer wasn't broken. It was just running slowly because its components were old.

Zhang Yuan obviously couldn't solve a world-class problem like that. He simply pretended to take the computer apart, cleaned out the dust, and deleted a bunch of junk programs.

Meanwhile, a group of girls gathered around to watch him. Their lively chatter and all sorts of random questions made Zhang Yuan feel quite uncomfortable.

I should've known better than to come.

"He looks kind of familiar. Have I seen him somewhere?"

"He was just on the livestream."

"Is he your new boyfriend?"

Han Ziyue replied, "No, no. He's my older sister's ex-boyfriend. He's an astronaut—he's about to go into space."

"Haha, that's a pretty strange relationship."

"...Can all astronauts fix things? If the computer chip really broke, how would you fix it? I heard that spaceship is going to fly for three thousand years."

Zhang Yuan patiently explained, "The main chips on the spaceship are traditional military-grade silicon chips. They're low-frequency and built on the micron scale. The simpler and more robust something is, the less likely it is to break. Of course, they don't perform very well, and we'll bring a lot of spare replacements. If one breaks, we'll just swap it out."

"If it's an electronic device we bring ourselves, then if it breaks, it's broken. There's no fixing it."

"I see. That's awful. I'd better pray my phone doesn't break!"

The girls couldn't imagine how miserable life would be without their phones.

As she watched them chat, Han Ziyue just smiled from the side, her cheeks slightly flushed.

Zhang Yuan knew exactly what she was thinking.

Girls were a little vain, after all. Zhang Yuan had become a bit of a celebrity, and bringing him back to the dorm to show everyone would definitely satisfy her vanity.

That was perfectly normal, as long as she didn't go too far.

He was a little vain himself, actually. Who didn't like being admired?

All in all, it had been a very pleasant day. He hadn't had to use his brain or study, and he'd even enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by beautiful girls and basking in the spotlight for the first time.

When Zhang Yuan returned to his dorm, he couldn't help feeling guilty.

This is too decadent!

"If Ye Kaifu were still here, he'd probably laugh at me mercilessly!"

He thought, Anyway, I, Zhang Yuan, won't be a backup option or a simp. I'm leaving on the spaceship in five days. What do I have to fear from this group of girls? Even if someone asks me out tomorrow, I won't go. I'll stay in my room and study.

Yes, that's what I'll do.

He read for a while, studied a little, then went to bed.

He had a good habit: he went to sleep before midnight every night and woke up promptly at seven the next morning.

"I wonder if Professor Wang has read my draft yet."

His eyes drifted shut.

He was sleeping soundly when his phone suddenly rang.

Ring, ring!

Zhang Yuan jolted awake and checked the time. Annoyed, he asked, "Senior Wang Lili, what are you doing? It's two in the morning, you know... You have a boyfriend too. Could you not bother me in the middle of the night?"

Wang Lili stuck out her tongue and asked sheepishly, "...I have a question. Are there any reference books on geometric group theory and topology? Could you recommend some?"

She couldn't understand it.

She really couldn't understand Zhang Yuan's paper.

She'd studied group theory and topology, but when the two subjects were combined and some of their more profound ideas were applied, she just couldn't follow.

Both were vast, profound branches of mathematics. Even after studying them for a lifetime, one might not master them completely.

She'd asked a few close friends, but they couldn't understand it either.

She'd also asked several doctoral students in the years above her, but they were still in that hazy state between understanding and not understanding. Still, everyone said it was a highly innovative paper that deserved careful study.

If she couldn't even understand it, how was she supposed to revise the paper?

She might even get criticized by the boss!

The thought of the boss looking troubled and sighing, with that look people gave an idiot, made Wang Lili anxious.

So she could only take this roundabout approach: she'd read whatever books Zhang Yuan had read, and then she'd surely be able to understand his paper.

"I'm a genius! I actually came up with this plan."

"I absolutely can't let that guy find out I'm revising his paper and can't even understand it. Otherwise, he'll laugh at me mercilessly—the kind of humiliation where you're lying on the ground getting trampled..."

But the next second, Wang Lili's face went ashen.

She heard Zhang Yuan say, "You want to study group theory and topology? They're two different branches of mathematics. There actually isn't a single comprehensive textbook that explains the connections between them."

"Then hurry up and explain."

Wang Lili nearly blurted out what she really wanted to say.

"Oh... A group equipped with a topological structure is called a topological group. You can think of it as a group with a topology, or a topological space with a group structure. The key is that the group operation has to be continuous. An important subclass of topological groups is the so-called Lie groups, and an important subclass of those is the classical groups, or matrix groups. For example, GL(n), O(n), U(n), and so on, which you may have encountered in linear algebra, all belong to this class..."

"If you want to study the subject comprehensively, I can recommend five books. You can also refer to the following papers..."

Five books? I'll be studying until the end of time!

I have to hand in the assignment tomorrow!

Wang Lili nearly fainted.