282: Chapter 282 is too difficult

"Haha, just thinking out loud."

Zhao Yang looked at Gu Qing's expression and spoke to her with a smile.

"Let's go, let's watch a movie."

The two bought tickets and entered the theater. Gu Qing had chosen a Hollywood sci-fi film currently showing. When the lights dimmed in the theater, Gu Qing moved her hand from the armrest and brushed against Zhao Yang's fingers.

Zhao Yang took her hand. This movement caused Gu Qing's body to relax slightly.

Zhao Yang didn't pay much attention to what the movie was about. His mind was still revolving around the Boolean Circuits and complexity class derivations from earlier in the day. It wasn't until the sound of Gu Qing's breathing as she fell asleep on his shoulder reached him that Zhao Yang pulled his thoughts out of the quagmire of mathematical derivations.

Gu Qing woke up near the end of the movie. After it ended, the two walked out of the cinema; it was already dark outside.

"What do you want to eat?" Zhao Yang asked her.

"Whatever, you decide."

Zhao Yang took her to a Cantonese Restaurant he knew. After the dishes arrived, Gu Qing took a few bites and put down her chopsticks.

Zhao Yang looked at her. He knew she hadn't asked him out today just to watch a movie. Based on his understanding of Gu Qing, for this girl to take the initiative to ask him out twice meant she had already thrown her usual reserve to the wind.

"That question you asked me last time at the Changsha Banquet," Gu Qing began, her voice softer than usual. "You asked if I could accept you no matter what you were like. You also said, what if I discovered the real you was different from what I imagined?"

Zhao Yang didn't speak, waiting for her to continue.

"I've thought about it for a long time." Gu Qing paused. "I want to know, what were you referring to?"

Zhao Yang leaned back against his chair. This was a question he'd have to face sooner or later. He just wasn't sure if now was the best time for a showdown. Considering Gu Qing's current state, her emotional investment wasn't deep enough yet. If he laid his cards on the table now, there was a high probability it would simply end things.

"My life is much more complicated than the average person's," Zhao Yang chose a relatively vague way of putting it.

"My attitude toward relationships and other things is also different from ordinary people. There might be more things you can't accept than you can imagine."

Gu Qing was silent for a few seconds.

"As long as you don't break the law or hurt others."

She looked at Zhao Yang seriously as she spoke.

"Other things, I can try to understand."

Zhao Yang looked at her serious expression and sighed inwardly. This girl clearly didn't understand the true meaning of what he was trying to express. In her perception, "different" probably meant being a workaholic, not being romantic, not having time to spend with her, and similar issues.

"Alright." Zhao Yang didn't explain further.

The topic was shelved for the time being.

After the weekend, Zhao Yang continued his research on the P vs NP problem. This period of seclusion was deeper than before. He began trying to introduce Homotopy Methods from Algebraic Topology into the complexity analysis of boolean function. This idea was very new, with almost no references to be found in existing literature.

But the deeper he researched, the more Zhao Yang felt like he was spinning in a giant maze. He could vaguely see light in a certain direction, but after walking in, he would find it was a dead end.

Two weeks later, he temporarily gave up on this direction.

"The difficulty of the P vs NP problem for humanity is probably equivalent to asking me to crack the system's source code based solely on existing knowledge and skills."

Zhao Yang muttered to himself with some helplessness.

The difficulty of this problem exceeded Zhao Yang's expectations.

Or rather, a problem of the caliber of the millennium prize problems still exceeded his expectations.

He had originally thought that since he could solve Goldbachs Conjecture, although solving this Millennium problem would be difficult, he should still be able to make progress.

But he hadn't expected that after just a slight deep dive into the problem, he would quickly fall into an embarrassing state where he couldn't advance an inch.

He decided to set this task aside for a while. Not to give up, but because he needed more accumulation. Perhaps when his subject levels rose further and his Intelligence increased another notch,

The problems currently troubling him might be broken through.

Continuing to waste time here, stubbornly grinding away at a problem where no progress could be made, yielded far too low a return.

Zhao Yang opened the system panel and looked at his current subject experience progress.

[Mathematics: LV6 (47334/1000000)]

[Physics: LV5 (1518/500000)]

[Chemistry: LV5 (492/500000)]

[Biology: LV4 (5110/200000)]

[Informatics: LV5 (77231/500000)]

[Linguistics: LV4 (3281/200000)]

Upgrading Mathematics from LV6 to LV7 required a full million experience points, which wasn't realistic in the short term. Chemistry, Informatics, and Physics were all at LV5, while Biology and Linguistics were the weakest at LV4 each.

Zhao Yang thought for a bit and decided to focus his main energy on Biology next. On one hand, he still had half a year until his undergraduate graduation from Yanlin University, which was a perfect opportunity to continue collaborating with Professor Gu Ming's laboratory.

On the other hand, once his private laboratory was fully completed and equipped with biochemical research infrastructure, many biological experiments could be rolled out.

The next day, Zhao Yang went to the Yanlin University School of Life Sciences.

Professor Professor Gu Ming was in the lab watching students run electrophoresis. Seeing Zhao Yang enter, he was clearly a bit surprised.

"Zhao Yang? What are you doing here?"

"I came to chat with you about something."

Zhao Yang pulled up a chair and sat down nearby. "I graduate from Yanlin University next June. I've already had Teacher Li hand over my graduation thesis to you. But with half a year left until graduation, I want to continue working on some projects in your lab.

As long as I can be properly credited on the papers, that's fine."

Zhao Yang looked at Professor Gu Ming seriously as he spoke.

After hearing this, Professor Gu Ming smiled and put down the notebook in his hand.

"Credit isn't a big issue, but you're already a celebrity in the Physics world. I read your paper on the superconductivity model; although I could only understand the general idea, I heard several professors from the Physics department say it's Nobel Prize-worthy stuff."

Professor Gu Ming shook his head with a smile.

"And yet here you are, coming to tell me you want to return to the School of Life Sciences to do Biology?"

"Physics is Physics, and Biology is Biology. I've always been interested in Biology, as you know."

Professor Gu Ming looked at Zhao Yang seriously for a few seconds.

"Alright. I happen to have a new project on hand, a collaboration with the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. We're using Gene-editing Technology to improve the salt-alkali tolerance of rice. The early foundational work is mostly done, but we're stuck on the functional verification of several candidate genes. Do you want to take on a small sub-direction yourself, or work with the project team?"

"I'll work with the project team," Zhao Yang quickly made his decision.

"I have other projects moving forward right now, so I can't fully commit to an independent major direction."

"Fine." Professor Gu Ming nodded.

"That's perfect then. Let Gu Qing take you through our project's experimental procedures first to get you familiarized. My Qingqing isn't like you; she's been focused in my lab these past two years. She can already independently handle quantitative PCR and Western Blots; she's quite the skilled hand now."

Professor Gu Ming spoke to Zhao Yang with a smile.

"Okay!"

Zhao Yang nodded.

After making the arrangements for Zhao Yang, Professor Gu Ming went off to attend to other matters. Zhao Yang walked over to Gu Qing's workbench.

At that moment, Gu Qing was using a pipette to add samples to a tube strip. Seeing Zhao Yang approach, her hands didn't stop, but she became visibly more tense.