174: Chapter 174 The Big Boss Has Arrived!

On the lecture stage, a professor in his fifties with somewhat thinning hair was writing on the blackboard. The board was densely covered with derivation formulas for the non-zero region of the Riemann Zeta function.

Wang Wenyuan did not interrupt the lecture; he led Zhao Yang quietly through the back door and sat down in an empty seat in the last row.

Although their movements were light, they still caught the attention of several students in the back row.

When they turned around and saw the face of the young man sitting next to Dean Wang, a bit of a commotion immediately broke out in the back row.

Almost all of these Peking University mathematics students had watched the live broadcast of the joint press conference a few days ago. Since not much time had passed, they were still exceptionally familiar with Zhao Yang's face.

"Zhao Yang..."

A boy wearing glasses nudged his deskmate's arm and exclaimed in an extremely low voice.

"Holy crap! This big shot is here!"

"The big shot who solved the twin prime conjecture!"

Several students in the back row whispered one after another, looking at Zhao Yang with burning gazes, their eyes even carrying a hint of admiration.

The slight commotion soon caught the attention of the professor on the stage.

The professor turned around and put down the chalk in his hand. He first saw Wang Wenyuan and was just about to greet him when his gaze fell upon Zhao Yang.

The professor froze for a moment, then revealed a warm smile.

"Dean Wang."

The professor nodded toward the back row and then looked at the students in the classroom.

"Class, it seems we have a heavyweight auditor for our lesson today."

The students in the front rows turned back one after another. The entire classroom instantly erupted in a buzz; everyone was whispering to each other, staring intently at Zhao Yang in the last row with burning eyes.

That was a true academic idol, the top genius in mathematics. At the same age as them, he had already solved a world-class mathematical problem like the twin prime conjecture!

"Quiet, everyone."

The professor smiled and gestured for silence with his hand, then looked at Zhao Yang and said with a smile.

"Student Zhao Yang, since you're here, why don't you come up and say a few words? We just happened to reach the estimation of error terms for the prime number theorem in this class, which is your forte."

Zhao Yang sat in his chair without getting up. He looked at the professor on the stage and said calmly, "Professor, I'm just here to audit. Please continue."

The professor smiled and did not force the issue. He knew that geniuses of this level usually had their own temperaments.

But just because he didn't force it didn't mean the students below were willing to give up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

These undergraduates, who had entered the top-tier program of the Peking University mathematics department, had been the top scorers of their respective provinces or Math Olympiad gold medalists since childhood. They possessed extremely strong self-confidence.

While they rationally acknowledged Zhao Yang's greatness, meeting him in person inevitably made them want to compare themselves and see exactly where this peer was stronger than them.

On what basis could he solve a proposition like the twin prime conjecture at this age? Was it just good luck?

"Professor, I have a question I'd like to ask Student Zhao Yang."

In the third row, a boy wearing a white shirt stood up. He was the student with the top professional grades in this year's top-tier class and had just won a silver medal in the S.T. Yau College Student Mathematics Contest last week.

Without waiting for the professor's consent, the boy turned around directly, his gaze crossing several rows of seats to look straight at Zhao Yang.

"Student Zhao Yang, I've read your paper published in the Annals of Mathematics. In Chapter 3, regarding the improvement of the GPY Sieve Method, you introduced a multi-dimensional variational weight."

The boy spoke quickly and clearly.

"But during my derivation yesterday, I found that if we increase the underlying arithmetic progression modulus q to the level of x to the power of 1/2+δ..."

"...when utilizing the extended form of the Bombieri-Vinogradov theorem, the upper bound of that error term E(x,q) seems unable to converge. Is there some topological homological transformation in here that I didn't understand?"

This was an extremely deep and professional question.

The entire classroom fell silent. This question had already exceeded the syllabus of the junior year Analytic Number Theory course and cut completely into the heart of modern, cutting-edge number theory research.

The professor on the stage frowned slightly. Even if he were to answer this question, he would need at least ten minutes of thought before he could provide a general line of reasoning.

Sitting next to Zhao Yang, Wang Wenyuan's eyes flickered as he looked at Zhao Yang.

Zhao Yang's expression, however, did not change at all.

The moment the boy threw out the question, with his high IQ of 173 and his Mathematics Level 5 foundation, he didn't even have a pause for thought and replied directly.

"You ignored the deformation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality on the complex integration path."

Zhao Yang sat in his place; his voice wasn't loud, but it was extremely clear.

"It's hard to explain clearly while sitting here."

Zhao Yang stood up and walked from the back row aisle toward the lecture stage.

"Professor, may I borrow the blackboard?"

Zhao Yang asked, looking at the professor beside him.

"Be my guest."

The professor said to Zhao Yang with a smile.

Zhao Yang nodded.

He walked to the front of the stage and picked up a half-piece of white chalk from the blackboard tray. He directly found a blank area on the board.

His arm rose, and the chalk landed on the blackboard.

Tap, tap, tap...

The sound of the chalk hitting the blackboard was rapid and crisp.

Zhao Yang wrote mathematical formulas directly on the board, explaining casually as he wrote.

"When q exceeds x to the power of 1/2, the traditional BV theorem fails. What I used on page 45 of the paper was not a homological transformation, but rather the direct introduction of Weil's bound to handle the Kloosterman sums."

The chalk rapidly produced a large number of mathematical equations on the board. In almost less than a minute, half of the blackboard was filled.

"By substituting this exponentially decaying bound into your error term E(x,q), the divergence problem is naturally resolved."

After writing the final formula, Zhao Yang casually tossed the chalk onto the nearby lecture desk.

He turned around and looked at the boy who had asked the question.

"Do you understand?"

The boy stood at his seat, his eyes fixed tightly on the formulas on the blackboard, his brain working frantically as he tried to quickly grasp Zhao Yang's line of thought.

He looked for a full two minutes.

The boy's eyes were filled with a deep sense of powerlessness.

They were clearly the same age, so why was he so formidable???

It wasn't even easy for him to just understand the things the other had casually written down!

"I understand..."

The boy swallowed hard, his voice a bit dry.

"Thank you."

He sat back down, his hand holding the pen trembling slightly.

Zhao Yang did not continue speaking; he looked at the professor to the side and nodded.

"Sorry for disturbing the order of your teaching."

"Not at all, not at all, you did excellently!"

Professor Liu beside him said, looking at Zhao Yang with a beaming smile.

Zhao Yang nodded and didn't dwell on it. Amidst the dead silence of the entire classroom, he walked down from the stage and returned to Wang Wenyuan's side.

"Let's go, Academician Wang."

Wang Wenyuan stood up, took several glances at the derivation process on the blackboard, then looked at Zhao Yang beside him. Without saying much, he led Zhao Yang out of the classroom.