Another Math School Prodigy

"Holy shit, man, are you working on extremal combinatorics?" the male student exclaimed. The three people around him looked over too.

As far as they were concerned, anyone capable of writing such a hardcore proof entirely in English had to be an old hand, at least in their first year of graduate school.

Qi Hao smiled politely. "I'm just writing a little something."

"Just a little something?" The male student leading the group was Liang Wenhao, a first-year math PhD student. When he heard that, he instinctively assumed Qi Hao was being modest.

"I'm Liang Wenhao. I've been grinding away at graph theory since my first year of grad school." Liang Wenhao was quite friendly. He pointed at Qi Hao's screen. "Your approach is pretty unconventional. I can't quite make sense of it. Which journal are you aiming for? From what you said earlier, the paper isn't finished yet, right?"

Qi Hao shook his head. "I've only just started. There are still some logical details to polish in the main proof."

Liang Wenhao exchanged a glance with his companions.

In pure mathematics, producing a high-quality paper single-handedly was no easier than climbing Mount Everest bare-handed.

Liang Wenhao ventured, "Are you trying to get it into an SCI journal?"

"Yes." Qi Hao made no attempt to hide his goal.

"Have you published one before?"

"No, I haven't."

Once Liang Wenhao understood the situation, he shared his thoughts. "Brother, I don't mean to pour cold water on you, but for us mathematicians, working alone on something this hardcore puts you at a huge disadvantage."

"Take the four of us. We've spent a whole semester on a 'random graph model,' and we still haven't managed to produce a paper for an SCI Zone 2 journal. Reviewers these days are all academic nitpickers. When you write alone, it's hard to catch holes in your own logic."

The female student beside him nodded in agreement. "That's right. With the sheer number of formulas you have, proofreading them later could practically kill you. How about this? Brother Hao happens to have a related project, also on extremal combinatorics. If you're not confident, we could work on it together."

"Or you could provide the ideas, and we could help polish the details of the proof and run the data simulations. All we'd need in the end is a credit on the paper. Besides, first authorship doesn't matter for math papers anyway. That way, you'd at least have a shot at an SCI journal."

In their eyes, a lone wolf like Qi Hao might have seemed to have a solid foundation, but he would most likely fall short when he tried to get published.

Qi Hao blinked. Have I just been invited to collaborate academically and carry them?

But they had invited someone so casually. It seemed their research skills weren't particularly strong.

Liang Wenhao continued, "What do you say? Instead of grinding away in the library alone until you go bald, why not join us? Our lab has computing resources ready to use. Once you finish the paper, I can also ask my supervisor to give it a preliminary review and save you six months of taking the wrong path."

Qi Hao froze for a moment.

About ninety percent of his paper was basically ready-made. Why would he need anyone else's resources?

Besides, at his current pace, nobody else could keep up.

"Thank you, but I'd like to try taking this paper through the whole process myself."

Liang Wenhao's smile stiffened for a moment.

"You probably haven't realized how brutal pure math research can be. Academia isn't a place for going it alone anymore. If even one point in your logical deductions is wrong, the whole paper is a pile of wastepaper. We saw that you had a good foundation and wanted to give you a hand."

"I understand, but I still want to try it myself first." Qi Hao put his hands back on the keyboard. "Besides, my area is rather obscure. I'm afraid I might hold up your project."

What Qi Hao was actually worried about was the group wasting his time. Of course, as a top student with emotional intelligence, he had to consider how well they could handle reality.

"How obscure?" Liang Wenhao asked, puzzled.

"Well, lately I've mainly been trying to use tools from the Soviet Union's school of mathematics."

Liang Wenhao and the others were dumbfounded.

Their first reaction was to wonder if something was wrong with Qi Hao's head.

What a joke. They were in graduate school to get a degree and find good jobs, not because they actually intended to sacrifice themselves to the truth.

What was there worth studying from the Soviet Union era?

Great, their math school had one more prodigy!

The male student beside Liang Wenhao muttered, "Better forget about Soviet Union stuff."

"If this is your first submission, you should be prepared to be rejected at least three times." A female student sensed the atmosphere growing awkward and hurriedly changed the subject.

Liang Wenhao nodded and took out his phone. "She's right. In academia, a hundred flowers should bloom... Exploring obscure fields is a rare scientific spirit too."

"How about this? Let's add each other on QQ. If you get stuck someday, or a reviewer tears your work apart so badly that you start questioning your life, contact me anytime."

There was no harm in adding another QQ friend, so Qi Hao took out his phone and added him.

Once they had added each other, Qi Hao asked, "Of the journals you mentioned earlier, which would be more suitable if I wanted a definite answer within two months?"

Liang Wenhao paused. "There's no journal that would guarantee an answer within two months now. JCT-B's review process will wear you down to the bone. It won't be over in less than six months."

"Take my advice. Discrete Mathematics isn't considered top-tier in the field, but it's an SCI Zone 2 journal, and its review process is efficient. You could give it a try."

"Thank you." Qi Hao nodded politely.

After a while, Liang Wenhao and the others packed up and left. Qi Hao could still faintly hear them talking.

"That guy's actually studying Soviet Union stuff. Isn't he afraid he'll have to delay graduation?"

"That's how people are when they haven't had the harsh realities of life beat them down yet."

"When he finds out his submission has disappeared without a trace, he'll probably come crying to us."

Qi Hao listened to them without the slightest ripple of emotion.

They don't understand, so of course I can't blame them.

Qi Hao thought generously.

The writing that followed did not go as smoothly as Qi Hao had imagined.

Although he had built a solid foundation in graph theory and combinatorics and understood Konrod's original proof, he got stuck on a key technical step when he tried to generalize the pruning inequality to more general finite-state game trees.

Specifically, while constructing generalized dominating paths, he needed to prove a lemma concerning a particular partial order structure on a directed acyclic graph. The lemma was definitely correct; after all, Konrod had written down the answer.

But Qi Hao had to fill in the missing steps himself!

Qi Hao stared at the dense derivations on his scratch paper, tossed his pen onto the desk, and let out a long breath.

He needed to find someone to ask.

It wasn't impossible to wrestle through it himself, but that would be far too inefficient.

Sometimes a problem that stumped him might be as easy as breaking through a sheet of window paper to someone else.

The first person Qi Hao thought of was Old Wang, his mathematical analysis instructor.

Although Old Wang taught them mathematical analysis, his research seemed to be in function theory and harmonic analysis. More importantly, Old Wang seemed to have a decent temper.

He probably wouldn't turn Qi Hao away if he went to ask a question.

Probably.

Qi Hao gathered the pages of scratch paper covered in derivations, stuffed them into his backpack, and headed for the Liren Building.

The fifth floor of the Liren Building housed the faculty offices of the School of Mathematical Sciences.

The hallway was quiet. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows, and Qi Hao stepped into the sunlight and soon found Old Wang's office.

He was about to knock when he caught sight of someone sitting in a chair nearby out of the corner of his eye.

The person's hair was meticulously combed, and on his wrist was a watch Qi Hao couldn't name but could tell at a glance was expensive.

The person glanced over and saw Qi Hao.

"Are you here to see Professor Wang too?" the person asked first. His Mandarin was very standard, but there was an odd accent at the ends of his words, as though he hadn't grown up in China.

Qi Hao nodded.

"Graduate student?" The person stood up and asked warmly.

"First-year undergraduate."

The person seemed a little disappointed. He said, "Oh," and nothing more.

Qi Hao didn't mind. He raised his hand and knocked on the door.

Soon the door opened from the inside.

Old Wang saw two people standing outside, and his gaze fell first on the man in a suit by the chair in the hallway.

"President Zhao." Old Wang's tone wasn't exactly cold, but it definitely wasn't warm either. "I remember making myself quite clear last time. I'm not interested in this matter. Why have you come again?"