Rankings in No Particular Order

To ordinary high school students, papers were actually quite mysterious.

Whenever they overheard college students chatting, they would always hear things like:

"Ugh, my paper failed review again..."

"My paper's plagiarism check came back 0%..."

Dude, a 0% plagiarism rate meant you really pulled something out of nowhere.

So Li Dong was no exception. He wanted to know what papers were really all about.

Old Yang opened China National Knowledge Infrastructure, searched a few keywords, and casually opened several domestic graduation theses.

He skimmed through them quickly, seeming rather dissatisfied.

"Ugh..."

"College students these days... Their paper formatting is a complete mess, their abstracts read like prose, and their citations aren't rigorous either."

Old Yang fell silent for a moment, his gaze seeming somewhat hesitant.

In the end, he closed the China National Knowledge Infrastructure page and typed an address into the browser: pr/journals/duke-mathematical-journal.

As Li Dong watched expectantly, the page redirected...

Unable to access this webpage. (Dear readers, please don't argue over this. Like GitHub, this site sometimes really can't be accessed directly.)

Li Dong: ...

Old Yang: ...

After some tinkering, the page finally displayed properly.

It was an entirely English-language page.

Li Dong was unfamiliar with this website.

At the top was the logo: [Duke Mathematical Journal].

Duke Mathematical Journal.

As someone who had yet to enter academic circles, Li Dong had no idea that this ugly English webpage was the legendary journal just below the top four mathematics journals, in the first tier.

Being able to publish a paper in Duke was something any mathematics professor at a top domestic university could be proud of.

Old Yang opened a past issue and found an article in the table of contents.

Its title was On Local-Global Compatibility for Automorphic Representations of GL? in the Case of Ramification Index≤ 2.

"...In the case of no more than 2..."

Li Dong muttered to himself. There were some technical terms he did not recognize.

Naturally, Old Yang heard him and added with a smile.

"Local-global compatibility for GL? automorphic representations in the case where the Ramification Index does not exceed 2."

However, he did not explain what the paper was actually about.

After all, unless someone was a master's student—no, even a doctoral student who did not specialize in number theory and Automorphic Forms—they might not know anything about this research direction.

Li Dong nodded, then looked at the authors listed on the paper.

Jiang Yubai¹ Zhou Shenzhi²

1. School of Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto Normal University, Kyoto 100875.

2. School of Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto Normal University, Kyoto 100875.

A flash of pain and unwillingness crossed Old Yang's eyes. His name should have been on it.

But Li Dong did not notice. He had already been drawn in by the dense English text and formulas on the screen.

Li Dong had evaluated his own mathematical ability before. He was at the outstanding level of an undergraduate mathematics student at a top university, but since most of his learning had been self-taught, his breadth of knowledge might still fall short of theirs.

Thus, he could only barely understand some of the foundational logic in Algebraic Geometry and Homological Algebra. As for the deeper proofs behind the core Langlands Program and p-adic Hodge Theory, they were practically heavenly scriptures to him.

Old Yang had never expected the kid to already want to tackle the "Langlands Program." If he had known, he definitely would have smacked Li Dong.

Are you getting a little too full of yourself? If you can understand it, then what were my seven hundred-plus days and nights of effort worth?

I used to be called a genius too, okay?

So he merely began explaining the conventions of international academic papers to Li Dong in detail.

"Look, the Abstract here is the summary. It isn't for you to write nonsense. You need to use the most concise language possible to explain what method you used and what problem you solved under what boundary conditions..."

"And the Citation references here—there can't be the slightest mistake in the formatting..."

Li Dong's base attributes were high, so he learned very quickly.

Not only could he remember those tedious layout requirements, fonts, and font sizes, but he could also deeply understand, from a logical standpoint, why those rules existed.

Because academia required rigorous inheritance and traceable boundaries.

A class period passed quickly.

Jiang Yang returned to the office with a water cup, his face full of frustration.

Only then did Old Yang stop and pat Li Dong on the shoulder.

"All right, that's it for this lesson. Just keep the formatting rules in mind; you'll need them in the future. Go back and prepare for the next two classes."

Li Dong nodded gratefully and left the office.

The next two classes happened to be Chinese and English.

Sitting at his desk, with all his core attributes raised to 0.2, Li Dong was like a barrel whose every short stave had been filled in. His brain was operating more efficiently than ever before.

The Chinese teacher analyzed flexible usage of word classes in classical Chinese at the podium, while the English teacher explained inversions in complex, long sentences.

Li Dong used to find such lessons dry and boring, and he could not even grasp the patterns behind them.

With humanities subjects, trying to derive everything through pure mathematical logic was often wrong. You had to empathize with the test writer's intent.

But things were different now.

His 0.2 memory allowed him to remember every fixed collocation and ancient poem, while his 0.2 logical ability helped him strip grammatical structures down to their subjects, predicates, and objects.

He suddenly realized that these things had become countless times easier to learn than before.

Time slowly passed amid this efficient studying.

At 2:55 in the afternoon.

Inside the teachers' office, Zheng Hua, Old Yang, and Li Dong huddled tightly around Zheng Hua's office computer.

The results of the "Huaxuan Cup" semifinals were about to be announced.

As the time ticked over to exactly 3:00 PM, Zheng Hua pressed F5 to refresh the page.

"The Sixteenth Huaxuan Cup Semifinal Round (Southwest Division) Advancement List."

The three leaned closer, then all froze.

By the usual conventions of commercial competitions, in order to attract attention and boost engagement, score pages would generally list real-time score rankings directly.

But this time was rather strange. The semifinal page did not reveal any specific scores, only a list of those who had advanced.

At the very top of the list, in the first position, was:

[Li Dong (Jiangcheng No. 7 Middle School)]

The second name immediately after his was: [Qiao Fan (Chengdu No. 7 Middle School)]

In sixth place was: [Lin Xiao (Jiangcheng Tianli Academy)]

Meanwhile, Zhao Ziwei from No. 6 High School, who had previously been so arrogant and proud, was ranked outside the top ten.

Although the bottom of the official list had a tiny line of text stating, "Rankings are in no particular order and are arranged according to principles such as the first letters of pinyin," anyone with eyes could tell: if both surnames began with the pinyin initial "L," why was Li Dong first while Lin Xiao was sixth?

And if there really was no order, why not list them horizontally in rows? Why insist on arranging them vertically, one beneath another?

This was clearly a kind of preferential ranking arranged by the organizers.

Li Dong was, in effect, number one!

"Good! Good! Excellent!"

Zheng Hua could no longer keep up the act. His face flushed with excitement.

"You brat, you've really brought glory to our No. 7 High School!"

Li Dong's heart pounded wildly as well, and he repeatedly chimed in.

"Good, good, good! Twenty thousand yuan! The twenty thousand is secured!"

The office suddenly fell silent.

Then, a burst of hearty laughter erupted.

Old Yang, standing to one side, appeared comparatively calm.

He knew Li Dong's ability far too well.

Given the physics and mathematics foundation Li Dong had displayed so far, let alone a high school competition, Old Yang even felt that if the kid were thrown into the Department of Physics at his alma mater, Beijing Normal University, he would definitely rank in the upper-middle tier!

[Azure Dragon Study Group member]: I advise you to reconsider your wording!!!!!

Zheng Hua immediately bolted for the office door to bring the good news to Principal Wang. It did not even occur to him that he could use the landline on the desk.

Old Yang shook his head helplessly and turned around, intending to offer Li Dong some encouragement along the lines of "keep it up" and "maintain this in the finals."

But when he turned around, all he saw was Li Dong with dollar signs in his eyes, foolishly giggling, "Hehehe."

Old Yang let out a long sigh.

"This kid is done for."