The time displayed is forty minutes ago.
He dialed the number.
The phone rang for the third time before it was answered.
A rapid stream of Korean came through, spoken at a speed like a machine gun.
" Cheng Che! Cheng Che! Do you know what?! It's all over the Korean internet! I thought I was seeing things! What paper did you publish? What Annals of Mathematics? I had the translator translate it for ages before I finally understood."
Cheng Che was stunned.
Feeling a pang of shame, Pei Jingshu was the only one of the four women who didn't know.
Su Qingyue and Yan Ruanning both saw him writing his thesis back in their hometown. Su Miaoyin called to inform him, but he didn't mention Pei Jingshu.
"I'm sorry," he said in Korean, "I didn't tell you about this."
There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.
Then Pei Jingshu's voice rang out again, with a slightly coquettish nasal tone. "Then you... you must tell me in the future. No matter what it is, you must tell me."
Cheng Che's Adam's apple bobbed.
I was truly moved.
"Okay," he said with a smile, "I'll come see you when I have time."
Pei Jingshu's voice lit up instantly. "Really?!"
"Real."
"You promised! You can't lie to me!"
I'm not lying to you.
After hanging up the phone, Cheng Che leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling with a faint smile on his lips.
And at this moment, the storm on the internet has only just finished gathering.
The entertainment industry was the first to crack.
No one can get involved in Cheng Che's affair, but no one can escape it either.
The entire team of a top-tier celebrity is in a meeting today.
Some people deleted posts, some turned off comments, and some changed the visibility of their Weibo overnight.
The lights were all on in the conference room, but no one laughed out loud.
But the ones who suffered the most were those few people.
Gu Yan was one of them.
As the second-ranked top influencer, and a competitor of Cheng Che, he pays close attention to Cheng Che's information.
His fans often attacked Cheng Che as a result.
Today, someone unearthed a video from an old interview.
Three years ago, backstage at an event, a reporter held up a microphone and approached him.
What are your thoughts on highly educated artists?
Gu Yan in the picture smiles calmly, his eyebrows raised.
"An artist's success depends primarily on their Let the Work Speak," he said. "Academic qualifications are a plus, but not a necessity."
After he finished speaking, he added another sentence.
"The audience is looking at the person, not the diploma."
Someone took a screenshot of these two sentences and paired it with Cheng Che's thesis homepage and Peking University's announcement.
It's been sent.
The caption consisted of only four words.
"Bonus points???"
That Weibo was forwarded 100,000 times in two hours.
[Bonus points???]
[Bonus points]
I have never seen anything like it...
[Dude, that was a slap in the face! I could hear it even through the screen.]
[He's right, a degree is a plus, and they added Annals to their resume.]
[As they kept adding, it got to the point where it was a conjecture spanning sixty years.]
It's alright, his Let the Work Speak; it's a masterpiece.
Gu Yan's studio quickly issued a statement saying that "the old interview was Fragment."
Within ten minutes of the statement being posted, the comment section had received three thousand more messages.
[ Fragment? What did he say in the full version?]
[Please release the full version.]
An hour later, the statement was deleted.
Meanwhile, none of the celebrities in the industry who consider themselves to have good academic backgrounds remained silent tonight.
One person sent a message using a secondary account. "Congratulations."
Deleted three minutes later.
The screenshot was saved.
On the contrary, several artists with lower educational backgrounds who were on good terms with Cheng Che generously shared the news, adding the caption "My Brother Che."
The comments section was very forgiving this time.
This is incomparable.
[It's a probability event.]
[It's good for your emotional intelligence to share this; no one will criticize you if you don't.]
It's fair to say that the internet has become a torture chamber, especially for celebrities who earn a lot of money but lack talent.
That torture was incredibly brutal.
Qin Lie, meanwhile, was constantly scrolling through Weibo, thoroughly enjoying himself.
He was curled up on the sofa, his legs propped up on the coffee table, one hand holding his phone, scrolling very slowly.
Someone from his studio messaged him asking if he wanted to control the online comments.
"No need," he replied casually.
"But Kuroko..."
Let them talk.
He put his phone down, stared at the ceiling for two seconds, then picked it up again.
"You can't persuade them."
He spoke with great certainty and confidence.
My own boss started out with absolutely no scandals, but now he's trying to become invincible. What's he afraid of?
He spent over an hour browsing the internet.
It's never dropped from the top of the trending topics list.
One page. Two pages. Three pages.
As he swiped, he pushed the screen down with his thumb very quickly.
Then he stopped.
My finger hovered above the screen, but didn't move.
He clicked on the Weibo post and zoomed in.
I read it once.
I watched it again.
[ CCTV Daily ]
This is the most authoritative official media in the Xia Country, and this is exactly what Qin Lie has been waiting for!
#Cheng Che proves Integer-Coefficient Polynomial Root Distribution Conjectures #
Nineteen years old, undergraduate student, completed independently.
In the same year, he lifted the Australian Open trophy in Melbourne.
In the same year, he played a boy the same age as him in a TV series.
Someone asked in the comments section: How far can a person go?
Cheng Che's answer was: No need to choose.
Sixty years ago, a mathematician wrote this problem down on paper.
Sixty years later, a nineteen-year-old boy from the Xia Country brought it to a close.
When the youth are strong, the nation is strong.
We look forward to the Peking University lecture at the end of February.
Qin Lie stared intently at the screen, his eyes unblinking.
My throat moved.
Then he suddenly sat up on the sofa and excitedly clenched his fist.
"It's done!"
He let out a long breath and leaned back on the sofa.
The golden statue is finally complete!