The System's Stuff Was Just Like the Soviets'!

More than three hours later, Qi Hao closed the thick Introduction to Graph Theory, pushed it aside, and opened a second book, Combinatorial Mathematics, without a change of expression.

Four hours in, he was halfway through Combinatorial Mathematics.

The graduate student stole a glance at Qi Hao and the book he was reading, only to discover that this guy was actually reading two of those incomprehensible specialist tomes in a single day?!

Bro, you're overdoing the act!

There's an art to showing off. Overdo it, and it just looks fake!

Tsk, tsk. The junior girl probably won't be interested now.

Qi Hao was completely oblivious to the graduate student's ridicule across the table. He was utterly absorbed in his studies: the basic framework of graph theory, Eulerian graphs, bipartite graph matching, the inclusion-exclusion principle... This hardcore knowledge, which would normally have taken months to digest, was becoming his own at a crazy pace.

Two books a day!

Qi Hao was still somewhat dissatisfied. The more he learned, the more he felt he was lacking.

To save time, Qi Hao went to the library whenever he had a free moment, practically every day. He even skipped trips to the cafeteria, bringing bread to take care of his meals instead.

The key was that he was happy every day living like this and didn't find it hard at all.

During this period, he swept through the shelves every day, from the basics of graph theory to advanced algebraic graph theory, from discrete mathematics to extremal combinatorics. He read two thick books a day, swapping them out as soon as he finished, without writing a single word, working everything out in his head.

By the end of the first week, Qi Hao had digested the core undergraduate material in graph theory and combinatorial mathematics and had begun reading specialized graduate-level topics.

In the second week, he concentrated on mastering the parts of measure theory related to probabilistic methods, the mathematical foundations of game theory, and the sections of algorithmic complexity theory concerning search trees.

On the thirteenth day, Qi Hao opened Konrod's paper again.

He found that it felt very different from before.

When he came to the proof in section five that had once caused his brain to crash, Qi Hao found that the wall that had stood in his way seemed to have disappeared!

It looked like his idea had been sound. With stronger fundamentals, the literature was easier to understand!

Reading through books was surprisingly effective!

The system's stuff was just like the Soviet Union's: hardcore!

Qi Hao checked the countdown on his Deep Focus · Enhanced Learning State and saw that he still had 1 day, 03 hours, 22 minutes, and 18 seconds left.

What else should I do with that time?

He still had a day left. It would be a shame to waste it.

He stood up, walked over to the foreign-language section, and came back with an armful of books.

Academic English Writing, Standards and Techniques for Writing English Papers, English for Mathematics Majors, plus a thick copy of Selected GRE Vocabulary.

If his English teacher had seen this, she probably would have been moved to tears. Qi Hao, who secretly read mathematics books in her class, was actually taking the initiative to study English!

Of course, Qi Hao's motivation was purely practical. He was about to write a paper, and English was the common language for papers nowadays. His Soviet system didn't even like English teachers, so it was even less likely to have anything for learning English. He would have to rely on himself for that.

In the Deep Focus state, he read Academic English Writing from cover to cover in a single afternoon. The academic uses of various tenses, standard expressions in the passive voice, and how to read and write mathematical formulas in English all went into his head. That evening, he finished English for Mathematics Majors as well, going through the specialized terminology in graph theory and game theory.

As for the GRE vocabulary book, he put it down halfway through.

It wasn't that he couldn't get through it; Qi Hao just didn't think it was necessary.

Academic papers didn't need some of those obscure words. It was enough to express things accurately, so why bother with anything fancy?

At that point, he checked his experience points.

[Mathematics LV1 (275→350/500)]

Mathematics was actually about to level up!

[English LV1 (110→150/500)]

His English experience points had really increased too!

Qi Hao was thrilled.

He could gain points just by reading!

What was he waiting for, then?

System, give me points!

Another day passed, and a system notification popped up.

[Deep Focus · Enhanced Learning State has ended.]

[Cooldown: 30 days.]

Qi Hao stretched.

The sensation of his brain working at high speed faded, and his thinking returned to its normal pace. In its place came a feeling of utter calm, free of desires or demands.

Qi Hao suddenly realized that the feeling was much like post-nut clarity.

Fortunately, though, all the knowledge he had learned over the past half month remained firmly in his head.

"Time to get down to business."

Qi Hao made an effort to rouse himself. He still had sixty-five days before the system task's deadline, and he had to make the most of his time.

Post-nut clarity or not, it could all get out of the way!

He opened the LaTeX editor and first went over the paper's overall structure in his head.

Put simply, his job was to translate Konrod's paper and then build on it to fill in the missing parts of the Soviet Union expert's proof.

He knew very well that if he merely translated the original, then in today's academic world, which valued complete chains of evidence, a paper full of logical leaps and enormous gaps in its core arguments would most likely be ruthlessly rejected by the editor at the initial review stage for "insufficient rigor."

So he couldn't follow Konrod's example in everything!

After all, Soviet Union papers were all about leaving readers to fill in the gaps themselves!

Qi Hao finished typing the title and started on the abstract.

Konrod's original text was in Russian. Following his earlier plan, he intended to translate the Russian into Chinese in his head first, figure out what it meant, and then turn the Chinese into academic English.

But when he began writing the first sentence, something strange happened.

"In this paper, we..."

He stared at the sentence on the screen, stunned for a moment.

Where did that sentence come from?

He retraced his thought process. The original Russian text of Konrod's paper had appeared in his mind, and then... nothing else had happened.

There had been no intermediate step of translating it into Chinese at all.

The Russian had turned directly into English!

It wasn't the stilted English of a word-for-word translation, but natural, fluent English.

Qi Hao wrote a few more sentences, and the more he wrote, the more smoothly it flowed: "We establish..."

Holy shit.

Qi Hao stared at the screen, finding it hard to believe.

The academic English expressions, sentence structures, and combinations of technical terms had all been internalized as a kind of linguistic instinct.

He didn't even have to consciously think about how to say a word in English before the correct expression came to him naturally.

Compared with Russian, the grammar was hardly worth mentioning!

So learning English was this easy.

In that case, he could read mathematics books in English class without restraint from now on.

It was happily settled!

Qi Hao kept writing on his computer.

By the time he reached the preliminaries, he was doing even better. This section was basically a matter of putting the graph theory and game theory fundamentals he had learned over the past two weeks into formal language. For him, it was as easy as writing something out from memory.

Just as he was engrossed in writing, voices came from beside him.

"I think we could try DAM. Its impact factor isn't high, but the review cycle is short. We should basically have a result within three months."

"DAM? Are you crazy? That's way too low. With our result, we should at least submit to JCT-B, shouldn't we?"

"Are you under some kind of misunderstanding about our paper? That's a top journal in combinatorial mathematics. If we sent them what little we have, the editor would probably reject it outright."

"Then where do you suggest we submit it?"

"I think Discrete Mathematics is a safer bet. It's in Q2, the reviewers won't be too difficult, and our result is a good fit for their focus."

"But Discrete Mathematics publishes so many papers a year. Its prestige..."

Qi Hao's attention was interrupted.

He looked up and saw four people sitting beside him, three men and one woman, with laptops and a pile of printed paper drafts spread out in front of them.

Judging from their conversation, they were probably graduate students.

Qi Hao had intended to put his head down and continue writing, but their discussion of journals happened to concern an issue he would soon have to face, so he pricked up his ears.

"How about considering a domestic journal?"

"It's convenient to submit to a Chinese-language journal, and the reviewers are easier to communicate with."

A tall, thin young man beside them shook his head. "Domestic journals' impact factors are too low. You're only in your first year of graduate school, so you don't understand this. Our supervisor requires at least one English-language paper in an SCI Q2 journal or above. Chinese-language journals don't count."

"Then let's go with Discrete Mathematics. Play it safe," one of them decided.

"I still think we could aim higher!"

Qi Hao quietly noted down the names of the journals they had mentioned.

Just as he was about to turn his attention back to his paper, the young man beside him glanced at his computer screen.

Seeing the LaTeX editor filled with mathematical formulas and English, the young man's eyes visibly lit up, and he assumed Qi Hao was a graduate student too.

"Hey, are you writing a math paper too?"