I Solved It

The chalk stopped moving across the blackboard.

The voice explaining the proof fell silent as well.

The audience below was stunned.

Lu Zhou's hand had not stopped moving for the past hour, so when he suddenly paused, everyone found it rather jarring.

Still, everyone could understand. Everyone had off days, after all. It was not unheard of for elderly professors to doze off halfway through a presentation. Besides, at a presentation on a major mathematical proposition like this, what was being tested was not merely a scholar's mathematical ability and skill at explanation, but also their psychological resilience.

In the silence, everyone quietly waited for him to continue.

However...

One minute passed.

Five minutes passed.

Lu Zhou remained standing motionless onstage, his brows tightly furrowed as he stared at the blackboard covered in writing, seemingly deep in thought.

When he showed no response for such a long time, the audience gradually began to grow restless.

Why was there still no movement?

Had he gotten stuck?

Or had he... discovered an error in his calculations?

Quite a few people cast gloating looks his way, while many others looked concerned. Accidents at presentations on major mathematical conjectures were entirely possible. After all, not every challenge launched at the monuments of human intellect could succeed.

Yet no one had expected that the problem would arise not during the final Q&A session, but during the explanation itself.

It felt as though...

He had tripped himself up with his own logic.

Hearing the faint commotion from the audience and sensing that a major story might be unfolding, the reporters standing at the back of the auditorium immediately and discreetly trained their cameras on Lu Zhou, zooming in on the expression on his profile.

For onlookers hungry for gossip, there was no such thing as too