Maintaining the Top Student Image!

She was actually laughing while reading Konrod's book?

That was completely unexpected to Lin Lan.

"What is it? Are there jokes in there?" Lin Lan couldn't help asking.

"No, but there's a mistake in the mathematical logic here. This derivation would make the inequality below completely invalid under extreme conditions. It doesn't look like it came from Konrod's original manuscript."

What amused Qi Hao was that when a big shot like Konrod wrote formulas, he would practically jump from the first step to the last and never give so many explanations. It was like an aloof goddess suddenly turning into a sweet, adorable girl next door. Something was off!

Besides, given Konrod's abilities, he wouldn't have made a mistake that Qi Hao could spot.

So Qi Hao suspected that someone else had added the derivation he was looking at.

He flipped to the end of the chapter and, sure enough, found a translator's note.

Lin Lan froze.

The passage Qi Hao had mentioned really wasn't from the original manuscript. She had asked the translator to add it so readers could understand it better.

As the editor responsible for the book, Lin Lan knew that the leaps in logic in the original manuscript were as vast as the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. To help domestic readers-mainly those long-suffering master's and doctoral students-understand at least a little of it, she had specifically asked the other veteran translator, a graduate of Moscow State University's mathematics department, to thoughtfully add an explanation to that section.

Lin Lan had checked it repeatedly with the translator, who had thumped his chest and guaranteed that the derivation was absolutely flawless.

And now, a random passerby she had run into at the provincial library had seen at a glance that it was a patch added afterward, and had even spotted an error.

"The translator of this book is a top graduate of Moscow State University's mathematics department, with a very solid grounding in theory. Are you sure there's a problem here?" Lin Lan asked, unable to believe it.

"I can't vouch for anything else, but when it comes to pure mathematical logic, I'm absolutely confident."

For a top student, confidence was important.

Who had ever seen a timid top student?

Besides, he had thrown on a short-sleeved T-shirt that day and left after casually running his fingers through his hair a couple of times that morning. He looked no different from any passerby, so why had she approached him?

It had to be because of his good looks!

Qi Hao felt it was necessary to maintain his image as a handsome top student, so he had to answer her question seriously.

Meanwhile, Lin Lan privately guessed that Qi Hao was probably a master's or doctoral big shot from the mathematics department of some 985 university.

To be safe, she pulled a pen and paper from her canvas bag and handed them over. "Since you think it's wrong, could I trouble you to write down the correct key steps?"

"Sure." Qi Hao took the pen, and in just a minute and a half, he handed Lin Lan a sheet of scrap paper covered in derivations.

"That's it?" Lin Lan took it in surprise and saw that he had worked through the derivation much faster than the translator had when adding the explanation!

"It wasn't that hard." Qi Hao capped the pen and handed it back.

Lin Lan stared blankly at the numbers and letters on the paper, only to find that she couldn't understand more than half of it.

"I'll take another look when I get back." Lin Lan put the paper away, feeling guilty as she made the excuse.

"No problem. By the way, are you familiar with the foreign-language section of the provincial library? I'm looking for papers by a few scholars." Qi Hao hadn't forgotten what he was there for.

Lin Lan breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. "Fairly familiar. Who are you looking for?"

"Adelson-Velsky, Landis, Brudno, and Arlazarov." Qi Hao rattled off the names of four extremely obscure Soviet scholars.

Aside from the author of a cited paper Qi Hao had found, these four were the god-tier support players who, together with Konrod, had made famous names for themselves in graph theory and search trees back then!

Several of the foundational lemmas in Konrod's manuscript cited their papers.

As an editor who had compiled and translated related books, Lin Lan was fairly familiar with one of the names.

She led Qi Hao to a metal bookshelf at the very back and pointed to a row of hefty volumes on the bottom shelf. "I remember seeing an early paper by Brudno in this collected volume when I was doing research before. You can look through it."

"Thank you so much!" Qi Hao's eyes lit up. He sat cross-legged on the floor, pulled out a thick old book, and began searching, instantly becoming oblivious to everything around him.

Lin Lan was astonished that he could become so absorbed in reading papers in the original language.

Just how good was his Russian?!

Could he have returned from studying abroad in Russia?

Watching Qi Hao, who was now completely immersed in the world of mathematics, Lin Lan waited beside him. To her surprise, he paid her no further attention, and in the end, she could only leave the provincial library first.

An hour later, carrying two cups of coffee, Lin Lan knocked on the door of the translator, Dr. Xu.

Dr. Xu was in his forties, a hardcore overseas returnee who had genuinely slogged his way through Moscow State University's mathematics department.

When Lin Lan put the sheet of scrap paper on the table and tactfully suggested that he might have made a mistake in his work back then, Dr. Xu was displeased.

"Absurd! What an absolute laughingstock!" Dr. Xu slammed down the coffee before he even had a firm grip on it. "The steps I added to that derivation strictly followed the mapping logic of modern linear algebra! Young people these days think they can overturn the classics after understanding a couple of differential equations? And he says I made a mistake?!"

"Please don't get upset yet. He wrote out a whole page of derivation, and it does look pretty impressive. Why don't you take a look?" Lin Lan said with an apologetic smile.

Dr. Xu felt that Lin Lan was doubting him. To convince her once and for all, he said nothing more, pulled out his phone, and took a high-definition photo of the paper. Then he turned on his computer and opened his email.

"Wait a moment. I'll send it to my old doctoral advisor, Professor Smirnov of Moscow State University's mathematics department, and let him see for himself what kind of nonsensical crap is on this paper!"

He quickly wrote an email and clicked send.

Dr. Xu folded his arms and said nothing, while Lin Lan sat on the sofa, waiting for the result with some apprehension.

The minutes and seconds ticked by.

After a little more than an hour, Dr. Xu's computer chimed.

"My advisor's word carries a lot of authority. Once he proves there's nothing wrong with my addition, you won't have to worry."

Muttering to himself, Dr. Xu opened the email.

"Xu, there really is a flaw in your linear mapping. The approach in the photo is very good. The proof here is the perfect derivation. I can't believe you actually made a mistake. I told you that you should have delayed your graduation and stayed with me for a few more years..."

Dr. Xu had slogged miserably through five years of doctoral studies at Moscow State University, working until all his hair fell out, and Professor Smirnov had still wanted him to delay his graduation?!

He couldn't help feeling relieved that he had graduated long ago!

No matter how formidable the professor was now, he couldn't take back his degree certificate.

Along with his relief, Dr. Xu found himself feeling conflicted.

His advisor's approval of the young man's derivation meant that the young man really did have some skills.

From what Lin Lan had said, the young man had spotted the problem in his supplemental proof in very little time. Young people these days were remarkable.

"Teacher Xu, what did Moscow State University say?" Seeing that Dr. Xu had stayed silent for so long and looked grim, Lin Lan had already guessed most of the answer.

Dr. Xu was in no mood to dwell on it. He closed the email and said, "My advisor said the derivation you brought over is correct."

Lin Lan's eyes went wide.

A professor from Moscow State University's mathematics department had confirmed it was correct!

Lin Lan recalled standing beside Qi Hao while he worked through the derivation. From beginning to end, it had only taken a few minutes.

In a few minutes, someone else would have struggled just to read through that proof, but he had not only read it and spotted the problem, he had also produced a complete corrected derivation on the spot!

Lin Lan was deeply regretful now.

She hadn't even gotten his contact information!

Lin Lan wanted to give herself a hard slap across the face.

As an editor, she had made the most basic mistake of all: she had met a big shot and hadn't added him on QQ.

Lin Lan suddenly felt as though she had missed out on a hundred million!