Old Wang, You're Missing the Point!

Meanwhile.

On the third floor of the administration building, in the president's office.

The president sat behind his desk, several printed documents spread out before him: screenshots of Tieba posts, screenshots of Big Eye Weibo comments, and a formal complaint from outside the university.

Across from him, three people sat in three chairs.

On the far left was the director of academic affairs, his hair thinning as he looked anxiously at the president.

In the middle was the dean of the mathematics school, his square face taut, his lips pressed into a line and his arms crossed over his chest.

On the far right was Old Wang.

He had been the last to arrive.

In fact, twenty minutes earlier, Old Wang had been planning to eat dinner early and then get back to his research. Then the dean had called and, without preamble, told him to get to the president's office immediately.

Old Wang had thought the time he forgot to enter grades in the system had finally come to light. He had hopped on his creaking twenty-eight-inch roadster and raced to the university in ten minutes.

Now he sat in his chair, looking at the others without knowing what was going on.

The president spoke. "Everyone's here? Then I'll get straight to the point."

He picked up the documents on his desk and waved them at the three men.

"I was receiving a guest just now when I got some news. After that, I didn't dare continue receiving my guest, so I had to call the three of you in."

The mathematics dean asked cautiously, "President, what happened?"

"There's been a great deal of discussion online about academic misconduct by one of our undergraduates. A post on Tieba's Mathematics Bar has received more than two hundred replies, and the related topic on Big Eye..." He glanced at the figures on the documents. "It's third on the trending list."

"Third?" The director could no longer sit still.

Weren't the people on Big Eye's trending list celebrities?

One of their students had made it on there too?

The ranking left everyone in the room exchanging looks.

The president continued, "Someone has already filed a complaint under their real name through the university's official email address. The wording is very formal; it doesn't look like an ordinary netizen acting on impulse. The complainant provided detailed information about the paper and search records, pointing out that the student cited five nonexistent references from the Soviet Union era in the paper."

He turned a page.

"The student's name is Qi Hao. I had someone check: he's a first-year undergraduate in Class One of the mathematics and applied mathematics major, in the school of mathematics."

As soon as he finished speaking.

Old Wang froze. "Qi Hao? Are you sure?"

The president glanced at him. "I'm sure it's him."

For a moment, Old Wang found it hard to believe.

Qi Hao had been coming to his office frequently over the past two months, asking questions that grew trickier each time. They could talk for an hour or two on every visit.

Old Wang had taught students for so many years that he could tell what any sort of behavior meant at a glance. The way Qi Hao asked questions showed that he was genuinely thinking hard, not putting on a show to draw attention to himself.

"President, could there be some misunderstanding?"

Old Wang spoke up, his tone growing urgent. "I know this student. Qi Hao is an honest, upright kid. Whenever he has free time, he's always buried in the library teaching himself, and he often comes to me to discuss problems. He's not the kind of person who'd resort to crooked tricks. I can vouch for him..."

"Don't be so quick to vouch for him." The mathematics dean cut him off, his brows knotting together. "The facts are right in front of us. None of the five references can be found anywhere online. How do you explain that?"

"Those are references from the Soviet Union era!" Old Wang argued. "So much academic material from the Soviet Union hasn't been digitized. Isn't it perfectly normal that they can't be found?"

"Old Wang, you're still defending him!"

The president motioned for them both to calm down.

"Old Wang, I understand how you feel, but you need to consider this from the university's perspective."

"This is no longer a simple academic dispute. It's been brewing online: heated discussion on Tieba, third on Big Eye's trending list. Do you know what that means? It means tens of millions of netizens across the country have seen it, and..."

"People online have dug up the author's information. Our university's name has already been put out there."

The dean asked, "There's one thing I need to confirm. Has this paper been accepted by 'Discrete Mathematics,' or is it just a preprint? If it's only a preprint, that'll be easier to handle. After all, it hasn't been formally published."

"The journal has formally accepted it." The director leafed through the documents.

The dean's expression grew even uglier.

Old Wang, on the other hand, reacted differently.

"Wait." He raised his head, his expression suddenly turning strange.

"You mean Qi Hao, a first-year student with no guidance from an advisor, wrote a paper himself, submitted it to 'Discrete Mathematics,' and got it accepted?"

"...Yes."

"Holy shit! My student is awesome!"

The three men: ?

"A journal on the level of 'Discrete Mathematics,' a first-year student, sole authorship, and he got in without putting an advisor's name on it?"

"Tell me, which of your students could do that?"

Old Wang excitedly paced a couple of steps around the office, like an old farmer who had discovered a lingzhi mushroom growing in his vegetable patch.

"I knew the questions he's been asking lately were getting deeper and deeper! I knew he wasn't an ordinary student! Look, that's talent! That's..."

"Old Wang!"

The president reminded him, rather helplessly.

"Do you think that's the point?"

"I called you here to discuss an investigation into a student's academic misconduct, not to hold a celebration!"

"Watch yourself. You're a professor."

Old Wang sheepishly sat back down, cleared his throat, and tried to make his expression serious again.

But he couldn't suppress the smile in his eyes at all.

The dean looked at the unreliable professor under him, a vein throbbing at his temple.

He was now seriously wondering whether Qi Hao had been influenced by Old Wang, which was why he was so careless in his academic work.

He turned to the president, his tone grave. "President, no matter what, this matter must be handled seriously. 'Discrete Mathematics' is a long-established journal under Elsevier. If academic misconduct is confirmed in a paper our student published in this journal, it won't just affect that one student, but the academic reputation of our entire university."

"In the future, when our university's teachers and students submit papers to this journal, what will the editorial office think? What will our international peers think?"

The president nodded. "That's why I called everyone here today: to launch an investigation as soon as possible."

"Before the investigation results come out, no one is to make public statements characterizing the matter. I don't want to see anyone at the university pinning labels on a student before the investigation has established the facts."

Old Wang was eager to say something, but the president stopped him.

"Old Wang, don't be impatient. If there really is no problem with Qi Hao, the university will clear his name. I can promise you that. We won't wrong any good student; the university will stand behind its students."

"But if the investigation confirms academic misconduct, Qi Hao will face serious consequences. At the lighter end, the paper will be withdrawn and he'll receive a disciplinary demerit. At the heavier end... you all know."

"'Discrete Mathematics' will most likely blacklist the authors involved and ban them from submitting. For someone doing mathematics research, what it means to be blacklisted by a journal of that caliber hardly needs spelling out."

Old Wang's expression finally grew grave.

He wasn't afraid of anything else; this was what he feared.

If Qi Hao were blacklisted by that journal, it would be much harder for him to continue researching combinatorics in the future.

At the thought, Old Wang couldn't help asking, "President, what will Qi Hao do afterward? The kid really has ability. He's only a first-year and can independently publish a paper of this caliber. How many people in the whole country can do that? If this ruins his academic future, that would be too..."

"That's why we need a thorough investigation," the president interrupted. "What you can do now is cooperate with it."

"Go and bring Qi Hao here."