What must come would come.
The last day of July.
Despite his immense reluctance, Lu Zhou finally stopped his unfinished research and began packing for Saint Petersburg, where he would attend the International Congress of Mathematicians in early August.
As for his sixty-minute presentation, after some internal struggle, Lu Zhou ultimately decided to play it safe. He put together a brief summary of his work on the Riemann zeta function over the past few years, then uploaded the paper to the congress website.
In fact, this was precisely how presentations at the International Congress of Mathematicians were meant to work.
Whether they lasted forty-five or sixty minutes, these presentations were never intended as occasions to announce major research breakthroughs. They simply provided a platform for scholars who had made outstanding contributions in their fields to summarize their research over the past few years.
After all, for many significant research problems, especially in number theory, producing any results within just a few years was extremely difficult.
Indeed, believing that investing time and effort would necessarily yield a return was naive in itself.
"Xiao Ai, do you think I should bring a jacket?"
It was still summer in Jinling in August, and Lu Zhou felt hot even going out in a short-sleeved shirt. But he had heard that the weather in Saint Petersburg was already turning cooler, and he had no idea whether he would feel cold once he got there.
The drone with a small television suspended beneath it bobbed beside Lu Zhou, a string of text scrolling steadily across its screen.
``` Xiao Ai: [...Saint Petersburg is located on the Baltic Sea coast in northwestern Russia, at a latitude of 59-60 degrees north. It has a temperate continental climate, with August temperatures ranging from 13 to 20 degrees Celsius. Although