An Old Acquaintance!

After grumbling, Qi Hao decided to change tactics.

Rather than tackle the tough nut of the main text, he dragged the scroll bar straight to the bottom and looked at the paper's references.

Qi Hao figured that if he could find the foundational theories Konrod had cited and drawn on, he could follow the trail and gain a better understanding of the paper's reasoning.

Except in the case of a few geniuses at the very pinnacle, no paper appeared out of thin air. It had to build on the research of those who came before.

When Konrod wrote the paper, he had probably assumed his readers had already read the works he cited, so he simply used a great deal of prerequisite knowledge without explaining it at all.

That created a problem: anyone who had not read those earlier works would hit a wall at every turn in the main text and feel as though the author were speaking an alien language.

But with that prerequisite knowledge filled in, the obscure material might become easier to understand.

Qi Hao scanned the list of references.

The good news was that Konrod had meticulously listed five references, all from the Soviet era, which met the task's requirements.

The bad news was that all five references were from the Soviet era!

Qi Hao was stumped.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, its entire vast academic system suffered a devastating rupture.

Many Russian-language academic journals that had only circulated internally back then simply ceased publication, and no one knew which underground archive in Moscow their original paper copies were gathering mold in. Finding an early Cold War Soviet publication on the internationally renowned Google Scholar or CNKI today was harder than reaching the heavens.

Qi Hao pulled out his phone and quickly considered ways to break the deadlock.

The Soviet academic world back then was almost a closed ecosystem. Now that I know Russian, I can just use Russia's own search engine, Yandex, to look.

If I really can't find them, I'll take the roundabout route! I'll look up papers by those extremely famous, world-class experts in graph theory, topology, and early computer search algorithms, then work backward through their references to see whether anyone cited these five papers!

There's also the provincial library. Too bad I can't check its holdings online right now, so I'll have to make a trip there. There's a good chance it still has a collection of Soviet-era publications!

He put his plan into action immediately.

Qi Hao was a man of action. That night, curled up under his covers with his phone connected to Yandex and various Russian literature databases, he became a miner searching for treasure among Soviet publications.

At one in the morning, after getting past countless dead links and rudimentary Russian mathematics websites, he finally dug up a PDF file with a slightly crooked scan!

He checked the author's name and the date. They matched perfectly!

It was one of the five references!

I finally found you!

Qi Hao was so excited he nearly squirmed around in bed. Only after making sure the file was genuine and usable did he fall into a deep sleep.

Throughout Friday, even during class, Qi Hao's mind was completely immersed in the system as he worked through the hard-won paper.

But that was still far from enough.

To fully grasp Konrod's reasoning, he had to get his hands on the remaining four papers as well.

Early Saturday morning.

While his roommates were still snoring away, sleeping in for the weekend, Qi Hao had already washed up. He slung on his backpack, packed with a notebook and scratch paper, and promptly walked out of the dormitory building.

He hesitated for a moment, then picked up the book of problems by Demidovich from the desk as well.

If he got tired of searching at the library, he could work through a couple of problems for a change of pace.

A top student's daily routine was truly terrifying.

Before he left, Wang Jun blearily poked half his face out from under the covers. "Hao, where are you going so early on the weekend?"

"The library, to look at some stuff."

"What library opens this early?"

"Not the school library. The provincial library."

Wang Jun said, puzzled, "The provincial library? You're going all the way there on a weekend?"

Qi Hao said, "A change of scenery might make studying more efficient."

With that, he slung on his backpack and left, leaving Wang Jun looking utterly bewildered.

Morning sunlight spilled over the tree-lined path through campus as Qi Hao, having eaten breakfast, headed excitedly for the bus stop.

As far as he was concerned, the provincial library was bound to have what he was looking for!

Forty minutes later, the bus rumbled to a stop at the provincial library stop.

The provincial library was always packed on weekends. The army of people preparing for civil service and graduate school entrance exams had occupied practically every seat with an outlet, but Qi Hao had not come to compete in the study rooms. He headed straight for the foreign-language special collections area on the sixth floor, which rarely saw visitors.

Qi Hao moved among shelves covered in Russian labels, his gaze sweeping over them like radar. Just as he was fretting over a row of 1960s Soviet issues of the Bulletin of Natural Sciences, he caught sight of a young woman standing at the other end of the shelves, wearing a khaki trench coat and black-rimmed glasses.

The woman held a brand-new hardcover book and was carefully comparing it with the classification numbers on the shelves, as though checking something.

What Qi Hao did not know was that the woman in black-rimmed glasses was named Lin Lan, an editor at a small domestic publishing house.

What she held in her hands was the obscure translated work Konorod: The Mathematical Soul of the Soviet Union, which had only just been published after she had gone to tremendous lengths and spent two years fighting to get it out.

She had made a special trip to the provincial library that weekend to see whether the niche book had made it onto the shelves.

Lin Lan turned and noticed a young man who looked like a college student staring at the shelves full of original Russian-language publications. Then he picked up a book.

It was Konorod: The Mathematical Soul of the Soviet Union!

"Are you looking at this book too?"

"Oh, yeah, I just happened to spot it." Qi Hao turned his head, saw it was the woman he had noticed earlier, and answered casually.

He had spotted an old acquaintance's name on the shelf and picked up the book out of curiosity. He also wanted to see whether it contained the paper the system had given him.

"This book is pretty obscure. Not many people notice it. Do you know Konrod?"

Qi Hao smiled. "I've been studying some of his work lately."

"Studying his work?" Lin Lan's delicate eyebrows rose slightly. "Hardly anyone in China knows about Konrod. Are you working in graph theory?"

"Something like that."

Hearing that, Lin Lan immediately perked up.

Even good wine could go unnoticed down a hidden alley. For someone in publishing, the greatest fear was that the obscure books they were responsible for would fail to find an audience at all.

She had pushed the Konrod project through at her publishing house's acquisitions meeting the previous year despite enormous pressure, and translating the book had proved far more difficult than expected.

The original contained a great many early Soviet mathematical concepts and terms, many of which ordinary translators could not understand at all. She had found three translators; the first two had given up halfway through, and the last had only managed to see it through thanks to his fixation on the history of Soviet mathematics. During that time, she had worked late into the night almost every day.

Now that the book was out, the publisher had allocated it pitifully few marketing resources. After all, the publicity budget had gone to projects more likely to sell in volume. Library purchases were proceeding normally, but she had no idea how many people would actually discover the book.

And if the book's borrowing figures and reader feedback remained stagnant, she would have no chance of securing publication for similar obscure academic translations at future acquisitions meetings. The Soviet publications in the project database that she was equally optimistic about might never have a chance to appear in Chinese.

She had never expected to meet a reader here!

Lin Lan hesitated, unwilling to miss this chance to talk, and volunteered, "The first half of this book covers Konrod's academic career and major contributions. The second half contains translations and commentaries on several of his representative papers. It's very helpful for understanding his reasoning."

Qi Hao's interest was piqued, and he flipped to the back.

Lin Lan watched expectantly as Qi Hao leafed through the book. To her surprise, after looking at it for a while, he suddenly laughed.